, in that part of Great Barr which lies in the borough Great Barr was historically a
township and
chapelry in the parish of
Aldridge, in
Staffordshire. The chapel, now the site of
St. Margaret's Church, is known to have existed by 1552, and its burial ground was consecrated in 1732. Samuel Taylor, an itinerant Methodist preacher, visited Great Barr in 1792 and remarked "preached at Barr, a village famous for nothing as having given birth to
Francis Asbury of America and being the present residence of his parents, at whose house we preached". Great Barr was largely rural until the early 20th century, though it was influenced by the early stages of the industrial revolution which affected the nearby towns of Birmingham and the Black Country. The Staffordshire parish of Barr straddled the route from Birmingham to Walsall. Birmingham's historian William Hutton was surprised to see so many nail-making workshops in the area. He noted that "in some of these workshops I observed one, or more, females, stripped of their upper garments, and not overcharged with the lower, wielding the hammer with all the grace of their sex". At that time the area was on the main drovers' routes which saw trains of horses taking coal from Walsall and Wednesbury to the factories and furnaces of Birmingham. At the Scott Arms there was a weekly cattle market which attracted large crowds. The Scott Arms and the Malt Shovel public house in Newton, did a roaring trade with drunkenness, cockfighting, and gambling common. Francis Asbury referred to it as "a dark place called Great Barre" The rural economy was dominated by four great landowning families, the Wryley Birches, Dartmouths, Scotts and Goughs. The parish was series of tiny hamlets: Howell's Row, Sneal's Green, Newton, Margaret's Lane,
Queslett, the Common, Bourn Pool, Bourn Vale, the Tamworth Road, the Gough Arms Inn (later called the Beacon Inn) and around Barr Hall. In 1817 there were 120 houses occupied by 127 families, 78 of whom were engaged in agriculture and 30 in trade. These trades included a tailor, boarding house owner, a wheelwright, a butcher, a grocer, who doubled as a constable, a shoemaker, two brick makers, a maltster, gun lock maker, three blacksmiths, and four spectacle frame makers. In 1866 Great Barr became a separate
civil parish, which in 1894 became part of
Walsall Rural District. The 1901 census recorded a population of 1,344 and by 1921 this had increased to 2,232. A 1919 report on health and
sanitation in Walsall Rural District describes the parish of Great Barr as extensive, almost entirely rural and having a scattered population, with the exception of residential
Streetley. By 1931 the population had grown to 3,294 and in that year Great Barr parish was reduced in size by transfers of land to West Bromwich, Walsall, and Sutton Coldfield parishes. In 1934 Walsall Rural District was abolished and Great Barr was transferred to Aldridge Urban District. By 1951 the population of Great Barr had reached 12,646. In 2015 the two local government wards in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, which now cover much of Great Barr, had a combined electorate of 18,840 adults. By the outbreak of the
Second World War in 1939 it was a busy residential area with good road connections to
West Bromwich,
Walsall and
Birmingham. Expansion continued after the war, and during the 1960s the area received a motorway link when Junction 7 of the newly built
M6 motorway was opened on the
A34. It is also located close to the starting point of the
M5, which can be accessed just one mile (1.6 km) northwards on the M6. On 11 August 1975, eight-year-old local schoolgirl
Helen Bailey was found dead from a single knife wound, in woods near Booths Farm. Her killer was never found. Kidnapper
Michael Sams abducted estate agent Stephanie Slater from a house in Turnberry Road, Great Barr before holding her for eight days in January 1992. Following receipt of £175,000 ransom, Sams released her. Police arrested him three weeks later and he was sentenced to life imprisonment for abducting Slater and murdering
Leeds prostitute Julie Dart. ==Geography==