Galton Village
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Galton Village is a residential area of Smethwick, West Midlands, England. It takes its name from the iconic Galton Bridge that was named after local businessman Samuel Galton. The Birmingham Canal Navigations main line to Wolverhampton borders the north of Galton Village, as does the Stour Valley section of the West Coast Mainline. The Oldbury Road A457 runs through the area, which begins next to Smethwick’s Galton Bridge railway station and ends at Spon Lane, at a small shopping centre.
The original housing estate on the site was built by the County Borough of Warley council in the late 1960s, and was known as the West Smethwick Estate. A model of the scheme as planned by Smethwick council showed six tower blocks of flats; three each of 16-storeys and 21-storeys, plus ten blocks of maisonettes.[1] Warley County Borough, which assumed the planning and development duties from 1 April 1966 reduced the number of high rise towers to two; the 21-storey Malthouse Point and Sandfield Point, constructed in 1967.[2] An Elim Pentecostal Church was built to replace one which had stood on Birmingham Road for 90 years.[3] The estate consisted of maisonettes and flats made from concrete, which earned it the nickname "Concrete Jungle". A borough councillor who was not invited to the formal opening on 25 June 1969, criticised the development for being too dense and predicted it would become a slum in the near future.[4] A shopping precinct and office block was built on Mallin Street. By the 1980s, many of the flats were empty or in disrepair, and the estate was blighted by unemployment and crime. At the beginning of the 1990s, Sandwell MBC decided to demolish the estate. Between 1992 and 1997, the estate was completely redeveloped. The swathe of concrete buildings was cleared to make way for modern low-rise housing. The West Smethwick Estate title was abandoned in favour of Galton Village.
Just to the south of Galton Village is West Smethwick and its park; the area sits on the border with West Bromwich to the north and Oldbury to the west.
It is not to be confused with the Galton council estate in neighbouring Oldbury, which was developed during the 1920s and 1930s.[5]
References
- ^ "Smethwick model homes". Express and Star. 5 February 1966. p. 18. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
- ^ "West Smethwick redevelopment area | Tower Block". www.towerblock.eca.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
- ^ "Picture". The Birmingham Post. 13 July 1967. p. 7. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
- ^ "Protest over open day invitations". The Birmingham Post. 25 June 1969. p. 43 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ "The History of Oldbury, Langley and Warley in the West Midlands".