Tipton District Library, which was built in 1905 but has not been used as a library since the service was moved to a new site in the
town centre in 2000 Until the 18th century, Tipton was a collection of small
hamlets. Industrial growth (
Proto-industrialization) started in the town when
ironstone and
coal were discovered in the 1770s. A number of
canals were built through the town and later
railways, which greatly accelerated its industrialisation.
James Watt built his first
steam engine because chimneys of local factories belched heavy pollution into the air, whilst houses and factories were built side by side. Several family businesses like James Lister and Sons, an ironmongery, emerged during this time to support industries by providing essential supplies. Most of the traditional industries which once dominated the town have since disappeared. In March
1922, 19 girls - as young as 13 - and young women were killed in an explosion at an unlicensed factory that was dismantling surplus
World War I (→
Tipton Catastrophe). Basin,
Dudley Port, Tipton, on the
BCN Old Main Line The
Black Country Living Museum in nearby
Dudley re-creates life in the early 20th century Black Country, in original buildings which have been rebuilt and furnished, many of them being transported from – or based on – sites originally located in Tipton. There is a residential canal basin at the museum, reflecting Tipton's former status in popular local culture as the
Venice of the Midlands. Some of the town's canals were infilled during the 1960s and 1970s. The towpaths of the remaining canals, the Old and New
BCN Main Lines are today a cycling, wildlife and leisure facility. The landscape of Tipton began to change further from the late 1920s when new housing estates were built by the town's council, in response to the growing need to replace
slum housing. Among the first council estates to be built were the Shrubbery Estate at Tipton Green, the Tibbington Estate near Princes End, (Princes End came under
Coseley at the time) the Moat Farm Estate at Ocker Hill (which earned the nickname "Lost City" due to its isolated location) and the Cotterill's Farm Estate at Ocker Hill, the Glebefields Estate at Ocker Hill and Great Bridge. Private houses were also built on smaller developments around the same time. The "Lost City" was integrated with the rest of Tipton as further housing developments sprang up around it namely The Glebefields Estate and The Gospel Oak Estate. During the
Second World War (1939–1945),
Nazi Germany made
The Blitz, a bombing campaign against the United Kingdom (7 September, 1940 to 11 May, 1941). There were a number of air raids on Tipton. On 19 November 1940, three people were killed by a
Luftwaffe bomb which was dropped in Bloomfield Road and destroyed several buildings including the Star public house; it was rebuilt after the war and demolished in 1996. Just before Christmas in 1940, an anti-aircraft shell fired from the hills at
Rowley Regis fell down the chimney of the Boat Inn, Dudley Road East, Tividale; fatally injuring 12 people at a wedding reception (including the bride, while the groom lost both legs) as well as the resident of an adjacent house. On 17 May 1941, six people died in an air raid in New Road, Great Bridge. Tipton Tavern and New Road Methodist Church were destroyed and a number of nearby houses were damaged. Tipton Tavern landlord Roger Preece was trapped in the rubble but survived with minor injuries. Tipton Tavern was rebuilt in the 1950s and became the Hallbridge Arms during the 1990s and, more recently, the Pearl Girl, the world's first licensed pearl bar. It closed in 2016 and has since been converted into a day nursery for young children. The last major council housing development by Tipton council was the Glebefields Estate part of Ocker Hill and not Princes End as many suggest, due to Princes End not being part of Tipton at this time, and built during the first half of the 1960s. A stretch of the
Wednesbury Oak Loop Canal was filled in to make way for it. The last major private housing development to be built in the Municipal Borough of Tipton was the Foxyards Estate, on land straddling the borders with Dudley and Coseley, in the mid 1960s. Until 1966, the town had its own council. The urban district council of Tipton was formed in 1894 contained only the
civil parish of Tipton, then received Municipal Borough status in 1938. The headquarters were originally based in a 19th-century building on Owen Street until 1935 when it relocated to the former Bean offices site on Sedgley Road West, straddling the border with Coseley. The council remained at that site for the next 31 years, until the dissolution of the borough council. On 1 April 1966 the district was abolished and the bulk of the Tipton borough was absorbed into an expanded
County Borough of West Bromwich, although a fragment of the town near the border with Coseley (including the former council offices and the bulk of the new Foxyards housing estate) was absorbed into the
County Borough of Dudley and most of the Tividale area became part of the new
County Borough of Warley. In this reorganisation, the township of Tipton was expanded around Princes End to take over a section of the former Coseley urban district. The parish was also abolished on 1 April 1966 and merged with West Bromwich and Dudley, part also went to form
Warley. In 1961 the parish had a population of 38,100. The headquarters building was later taken over by Dudley College, who retained it until 1993. It has since been occupied by businesses and training scheme providers. Since
1974, Tipton has been split between the
Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, which was created by a merger of the former West Bromwich and Warley boroughs, and the neighbouring
Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. By the end of the 1970s, most of the housing in Tipton built before 1890 had been demolished. Owen Street, the town's main shopping area, was redeveloped between 1979 and 1982, with a reduced number of shop units as well as new low-rise council houses and flats. In
1956, one of Britain's first comprehensive schools,
Tividale Comprehensive School, was opened in Tipton near the border with
Oldbury, in the area which became part of Warley a decade later and was not included in the modern Tipton DY4 postal district. Tipton's first gasworks was opened in 1958 and redeveloped as a state-of-the-art
naphtha gas plant by 1965, but owing to the emergence of
North Sea gas, the gasworks closed in 1975 and stood empty for a decade before demolition. The site of the gas plant was redeveloped as the 'Standbridge Park housing estates' in the 1990s. Tipton has
two railway stations, the main railway station at Owen Street and another station at Dudley Port. There were several other stations in the town on three different railway lines, but these were gradually closed between 1916 and 1964 as passenger trains were phased out on these lines. The
Dudley-Wolverhampton railway line, which straddled Tipton's border with Coseley, closed in 1968. The Princes End Branch Line, which was only two miles long, closed in 1981. The
South Staffordshire Line through Tipton, which led to
Walsall northwards and
Dudley southwards, closed in 1993. The part of the line between Wednesbury and Brierley Hill was scheduled to re-open in 2025 as a part of Midland Metro line 2. Most of the archive collection for Tipton is held at
Sandwell Community History and Archives Service; some items have been retained by the town's library. ==Local industry==