The Smestow runs very close to a number of Roman sites, the most important being at
Greensforge, where two camps were successively situated, one apparently using the stream as part of its fortifications. However, it was the
Anglo-Saxon settlement that brought significant permanent human habitation to the valley, and it is probably from these settlers that the stream took its name.
Industry The banks of the Smestow and Stour were home to a thriving iron industry, based on locally produced charcoal, from the Middle Ages until the 18th century. This included many
forges but also, from the mid-17th century, some fairly large enterprises run by wealthy businessmen, like those at the Grange Furnace, near
Trescott, Heath Forge near Wombourne, Swindon,
Greensforge, and Gothersley. To power the Heath Mill, a substantial leat was constructed to divert water from the Smestow at Trysull into a mill pond above the little valley of the
Wom Brook, whence it dropped into the brook, powering a series of mills, and then flowed back into the Smestow. Key names connected with these developments were the
Foley family and the
Dud Dudley, an illegitimate son of
Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley. Dudley carried out early experiments, using coal products to substitute for charcoal in iron production. The Dudley family had large works at Cradley, but Dud Dudley claimed his process was used at an iron works at
Swindon. His father (also an ironmaster) lived at
Himley Hall on a tributary of the Smestow, near which he had a
blast furnace. In the late 18th century, the spread of coke-fired
blast furnaces in Shropshire and the Black Country brought charcoal-fired iron production gradually to an end. Heath Forge became a corn mill in the 1810s, while Swindon Forge was modernised in the mid-19th century. Water-power for the continuing industrial activity was so important that
James Brindley was prevented from cutting off the flow of the upper Smestow when the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal was developed, around 1770. Instead he was forced to preserve the flow with a "water bridge" or aqueduct at Dunstall, in the Aldersley Gap, which carries the brook over the canal and releases it to descend to its natural course. The canal itself allowed coal, coke and iron to be transported more easily, allowing industrialists to combine water and steam power, alongside coke-fired blast furnaces, wherever the river and canal ran close together. The result was the development of larger iron-works at Swindon and Gothersley on the Smestow, as well as nearby at the Hyde, near Kinver on the Stour – all situated between river and canal. The Swindon works included a rolling mill and generated power mainly from coal, although its drop hammer was driven by a large
water wheel. It was to last until 1976. Although iron production was thus centralised, the small-scale, decentralised working of iron not only continued but increased. An 1817 commentator tells us that Swindon has "an iron-works, some forges, and a blade-mill, where by a peculiar temperament of the iron, it is formed into scythes, sickles, axes, &c." A survey of 1834 adds corn mills to the list of enterprises at Swindon. It also tells us that Wombourne is a large village, "occupied chiefly by nailors, who work for the neighbouring manufacturers". The nail-makers were thus mainly self-employed contractors, working in their own small forges on iron brought in from the large producers. The demand for water to power the forges continued and even rose well into the Victorian period, during which the Smestow powered at least 30 mills. In some cases, as at Greensforge and Heath, iron-working gave way ultimately to corn milling.
Water supply Meanwhile, the industries of north Wolverhampton continued to use the water of the Smestow for a range of purposes, not least to carry away effluent. From the 1870s water was extracted in large quantities at the source for the brewing industry. The large
Springfield Brewery that was built for William Butler at the source of the Smestow in 1873 was to operate until 1991, for much of its life in the hands of
Mitchells & Butlers. The main reason that the brook itself often appears scant in flow and unimportant is that the rock beneath is highly-permeable sandstone. Hence, very large quantities of water can be locked away not far below the surface, in the underlying
aquifer. As early as 1851, the engineer Henry Marten gauged the supply at ten million gallons (approximately 45,000,000 litres) per day and proposed to extract water for drinking and industrial use from the Smestow. This was blocked by opposition from the carpet makers of
Kidderminster, who feared that extraction from the Smestow would affect the flow of the Stour, which they used to carry away their effluent. The following year, Marten put forward a scheme for drinking water extraction from the lower Smestow. This time he sent water samples to analytical laboratories in London, where they were pronounced exceptionally clear and free from decaying matter. The aquifer beneath the sandstone is itself very vulnerable to pollution, and the actual river water at that time is unlikely to have been free of chemical and microbial pollution. Perhaps it is a good thing that Marten's idea was not put into practice until the 1890s, when a large pumping station was constructed at Ashwood, south of Swindon, to supply water to Black Country industry. This was soon followed by the
Bratch pumping station at Wombourne, built to supply
Bilston with drinking water. Both of these extracted water from the aquifer, not directly from the river, and were actually sited closer to the canal, which could be used to supply them with coal. In the 20th century attempts were made to clean up the Smestow. These, together with the almost total collapse of heavy industry in Wolverhampton and the Black Country during the 1980s, have allowed the river to recover from earlier pollution. Today the water is clear and the courses of the river and the canal are important wildlife havens. ==Tributaries==