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Halesowen

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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a market town in the Oldbury parliamentary division of Worcestershire, England, on a branch line of the Great Western and Midland railways, 6z m. W.S.W. of Birmingham. Pop. (Igoi), 4057. It lies in a pleasant country among the eastern foothills of the Lickey Hills. There are extensive iron and steel manufactures. The church of SS Mary and John the Baptist has rude Norman portions; and the poet William Shenstone, buried in 1763 in the churchyard, has a memorial in the church. His delight in landscape gardening is exemplified in the neighbouring estate of the Leasowes, which was his property. There is a grammar school founded in 1652, and in the neighbourhood is the Methodist foundation of Bourne College (1883). Close to the town, on the river Stour, which rises in the vicinity, are slight ruins of a Premonstratensian abbey of Early English date. Within the parish and 2 m. N.W. of Halesowen is Cradley, with iron and steel works, fire-clay works and a large nail and chain industry.