Quarry Bank

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quarry Bank is a small town in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England. Locally, the name is often pronounced, "Quarry Bonk". [1]

The earliest settlements in Quarry Bank were farms and farm-worker's houses; some industrial developments followed in the early 17th, round the Cradley Forge.

Formerly part of the parish of Kingswinford, Quarry Bank acquired its own parish status in September 1844.

Quarry Bank was an urban district of Staffordshire from 1894 to 1934, when it was added to the Brierley Hill urban district. This became part of the county borough of Dudley in 1966 and then the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in West Midlands since 1974.

Quarry Bank has become greatly affected by the adjacent Merry Hill Shopping Centre which has bought high volumes of traffic along the High Street. This has meant demolition of a number of homes, the closure of the top end of the former High Street, and construction of a new replacement section of High Street to try and cope with traffic.

An unusual feature of Quarry Bank is its long steep High Street, hence "Bank", which slopes from the bottom end where it meets the neighbouring town of Cradley Heath to the top at the junction with Thorns Road. Clinging to the hillside, and varying from varying from very steep to almost flat, it has changed little, except for modernisation of shop fronts. Major retail chains have bypassed the town, leaving just small independent traders and public houses.