Oldbury, Langley and Warley

This book tells the story of Oldbury's rise from overcrowded Victorian town to progressive municipal borough, and its absorption into larger local authorities from 1966. Its success was built on coal mining, metal working and chemicals. Further south, off the coalfield, lay the rural area of 'old' Warley, whose fields were lost to housing between the wars. Langley, at the boundary of the coalfield, was part industrial and part rural. In 230 pictures, Oldbury, Langley and Warley in Old Photographs describes the area in 1900, and traces its changes during the twentieth century. It shows some of the people, organisations and events that made up life in this hard-working, hard-living, town. Much recorded here has become the victim of 'progress', and we have only photographs, reports and a few eye-witnesses to preserve the history of the place and its old lifestyle. Most of the pictures are previously unpublished or come from sources not readily available. The author and the Oldbury Local History Group hope the book will make a contribution to recording the town and be of interest to those new to the area as well as those who remember the place as it was.