Tividale

[3] Rattlechain Brickworks were opened in the 1890s on a site near Sedgley Road East, in the shadow of the New Main Line Canal which links Wolverhampton with Birmingham.

Since the late 1990s, there has been growing local concern over Rattlechain Lagoon, with numerous dead birds being found at the site.

Nearby residents, including those of a housing development built in 2006, feared that the proximity of their homes to Rattlechain Lagoon could render them unsellable.

The Birmingham New Road (linking Birmingham with Wolverhampton and also providing a direct road link with Dudley, Tipton, Sedgley, Coseley and Oldbury) opened in November 1927, dividing the Dudley and Tipton sections of Tividale, and was quickly followed by housing developments along the route and in the areas surrounding it.

Tividale began to expand rapidly soon after the completion of the Birmingham New Road, namely with the Grace Mary Estate, which was built by Dudley County Borough Council in the mid 1930s.

Private houses began to spring up along the Birmingham New Road during the mid 1930s, and were followed soon afterwards by the Tividale Hall Estate, construction of which was halted around 1940 due to the war effort.

The Luftwaffe are believed to have targeted these areas of Tividale due to their proximity to the "Big Bertha" anti-aircraft gun which was located near City Road and had been erected at the beginning of the war in 1939 to tackle the impending threat of enemy bombers.

On 21 December 1940, the Boat Inn on Dudley Road East was struck by a stray anti-aircraft shell from "Big Bertha",[18] resulting in the deaths of 12 people who were attending a wedding reception there.

A total of 27 people died as a result of air raids at Tividale during the Second World War, and dozens more were injured.

On the southern and eastern slopes of Turner's Hill, which straddles the border of Tividale and Rowley Regis, a huge quarry exposes the brown and grey igneous rock, called dolerite, which covers less than one square mile.

The dark brown, shapeless rock was used to create walls around the windy fields on the summit of Turners Hill.

The rise of the quarry industry on a commercial scale dates from the 1820s; the hard smooth rock was used for the paving stones of new streets in Birmingham and the rapidly growing Black Country towns.

In the mid 1960s, however, the section of the course on Darby's Hill was sold and part of it was used to build a private housing estate known as Oakham Green.

Grace Mary was built in the 1930s between Oakham and the recently completed Birmingham New Road, mostly as council housing.

Castle View is an extension of Tividale Hall and was built during the 1970s, mostly as private housing, but also with several low-rise blocks of council flats.

In the early 1990s, the area of Tipton around the Birmingham Canal - site of the Long established REVO factory until the late 1970s, was developed as a private housing estate called Tividale Quays.

The large, brick building became known as the "Cathedral of the Black Country" and earned a reputation for advanced Anglo-Catholicism early in its history.

Several vicars became very well known and loved: one, Wynn Griffiths, is commemorated in a street name in the Tividale Quays development.

The Parish Church was earmarked for demolition in 1982 after an inspection revealed that the buildings were riddled with damp and woodworm which would have been very expensive to remedy.

A Gurdwara can be identified from a distance by a tall flagpole bearing the Nishan Sahib, the Sikh flag.

Vono beds set up business at Tividale in 1896 and remained present in the area for some 100 years afterwards, until relocating from their Groveland Road factory to a new site in Wednesbury during the 1990s.

Tividale Football Club play in the West Midlands (Regional) League Premier Division.

1930 stone bottle labelled "Lissimore & Co – Botanic beer – Tividale, Tipton", in a storeroom of the Black Country Living Museum.