Moxley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moxley is a part of Darlaston in the West Midlands. It was first developed during the early part of the 19th century when a handful of terraced houses were built to accommodate locals working in factories and mines and the area was created in 1845 out of land from Darlaston, Bilston and Wednesbury.

It is centred on the famous London to Holyhead Road and since the 1990's has been bypassed by the Black Country New Road. It has public transport connections with Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Dudley and Walsall.

Moxley has hit the local headlines several times. In 1993, a woman was found dead in her flat. Police named her estranged husband as the prime suspect and he was found dead several days later, having killed himself. In 1999, virtually all of a council house fell down a disused mineshaft. The adjoining house also had to be demolished.

In January 2002, Walsall Housing Group announced plans to demolish the 130-house Harrowby Road estate which was built on the site of a coalmine during the 1930s and had suffered from subsidence which had resulted in less than half of the houses on the estate being occupied. Most of the estate has since been cleared, but a group of homeowners have remained on the estate because the Darlaston Housing Trust was failing to made adequate offers for their homes.

Patrick Martin, who had lived in Harrowby Road all his life, refused to move because he had been offered just £25,000 for his two-bedroomed house when an independent valuer had told him that it would fetch £84,000 just a few streets away (BBC Midlands Today, February 2004). Mr Martin re-appeared on BBC Midlands Today in April 2005, telling viewers: "I said from day one that I wasn't going to stand in the way of progress, but I don't call £25,000 progress." Another resident on the estate, Kevin Allen, was offered £35,000 for his home, but he reckoned that the true market value was around £100,000.

Mr Martin finally moved out in December 2006 after agreeing a £77,500 deal for his home, but three other homes on the estate (including Mr Allen's) are still occupied.

It is served by two churches, All Saints, which is in the Anglican diocese of Lichfield, and Moxley Methodists'.

Moxley is served by the Midland Metro with a Metro stop located in Bradley Lane, which was opened in 1999 along the route of a railway line which had been closed to passengers in 1972 but part of it remained open to goods trains until 1992.