Moxley

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This article is about a residential district in Darlaston, Walsall, West Midlands, England. For other meanings, see Moxley (disambiguation).

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.

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[edit] Notable local events

Moxley has hit the local headlines several times.

In May 1993, 54-year-old Christine Rees, of Glynne Avenue, was found dead in her ground floor council flat. Police named her fiancée Mr Kenneth Gear as prime suspect, but he was found dead several days later as a result of suspected suicide by overdose.

In May 1999, virtually all of a council house on Hughes Road fell down a disused mineshaft. The adjoining house also had to be demolished.

In January 2002, Walsall Housing Group announced plans to demolish the 127-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. All but two houses on the estate have now been cleared, but a long struggle to empty all of the properties has been ongoing for several years and is still one house away from completion.

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). By then, Mr Martin's home was one of just 20 homes on the estate still occupied.

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. By this stage, just seven homes on the estate were occupied.

Patrick Martin finally moved out in December 2006 after agreeing a £77,500 deal for his home, and two more homeowners have left since, but as of January 2008, Mr Allen is still in his home and is the last remaining resident on the estate.

Arson attacks in particular were a frequent occurrence on Harrowby Road, and on one occasion the fire bridgade were called out three times in one day to put out fires in empty properties. The regeneration of Harrowby Road has also seen the demolition of 1960s/1970s flats and houses on neighbouring Belmont Gardens, with these properties being demolished during 2005.

A similar regeneration took place on nearby Curtin Drive in 2007, when two three-storey blocks of 1950s council flats were demolished, having stood derelict for several years and been subjected to extensive vandalism.

[edit] Religion

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

[edit] Transport

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

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.

Several public bus services serve Moxley these are list below:

[edit] Education

The nearest secondary school is Darlaston Community Science College, approximately one mile away near Darlaston town centre.

The local primary school is Moorcroft Wood Primary School, which opened in September 2005 on a merger of Moxley Infant School in Moxley Road, and Dorothy Purcell Junior School in Bull Lane. The school was split between the two sites for one year until the Moxley Road site was closed and the infant part of the school transferred to the Bull Lane site. Moxley Infant School, which was built in 1927, is now derelict and awaiting redevelopment.