Historically, Staffordshire was divided into five
hundreds:
Cuttlestone,
Offlow,
Pirehill,
Seisdon, and
Totmonslow. The historic boundaries of Staffordshire cover much of what is now the
metropolitan county of
West Midlands. An
administrative county of Staffordshire was set up in 1889 under the
Local Government Act 1888 covering the county, except for the
county boroughs of
Wolverhampton,
Walsall, and
West Bromwich in the south (the area known as the
Black Country), and
Hanley in the north. The Act also saw the towns of
Tamworth (partly in Warwickshire) and
Burton upon Trent (partly in Derbyshire) united entirely in Staffordshire. In 1553,
Queen Mary made
Lichfield a
county corporate, meaning it was administered separately from the rest of Staffordshire, remaining so until 1888.
Handsworth and
Perry Barr became part of the county borough of
Birmingham, and thus
Warwickshire, in 1911 and 1928 respectively. Burton, in the east of the county, became a county borough in 1901, and was followed by
Smethwick, another town in the Black Country in 1907. In 1910 the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries, including Hanley, became the single county borough of
Stoke-on-Trent. , discovered in a field near
Lichfield in July 2009, is perhaps the most important collection of
Anglo-Saxon objects found in England. A significant boundary change occurred in 1926 when the east of
Sedgley was transferred to
Worcestershire to allow the construction of the new
Priory Estate on land purchased by
Dudley County Borough council. A major reorganisation in the Black Country in 1966, under the recommendation of the
Local Government Commission for England, led to the creation of an area of contiguous county boroughs. The
County Borough of Warley was formed by the merger of the county borough of Smethwick and municipal borough of
Rowley Regis with the Worcestershire borough of
Oldbury: the resulting county borough was associated with Worcestershire. Meanwhile, the county borough of
Dudley, historically a
detached part of Worcestershire, expanded and became associated with Staffordshire instead. This reorganisation led to the administrative county of Staffordshire having a thin protrusion passing between the county boroughs (to the east) and Shropshire, to the west, to form a short border with Worcestershire. Under the
Local Government Act 1972, on 1 April 1974, the county boroughs of the Black Country and the
Aldridge-Brownhills Urban District of Staffordshire became, along with Birmingham, Solihull, and Coventry and other districts, a new metropolitan county of West Midlands. County boroughs were abolished, with Stoke becoming a non-metropolitan district in Staffordshire, and Burton forming an
unparished area in the district of
East Staffordshire. On 1 April 1997, under a recommendation of the
Banham Commission, Stoke-on-Trent became a unitary authority independent of Staffordshire once more. In July 2009, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found in Britain was discovered in a field near Lichfield. The artefacts, known as
The Staffordshire Hoard, have tentatively been dated to the 7th or 8th centuries, placing the origin of the items in the time of the
Kingdom of Mercia. ==Education==