Dudley

Dudley, a parliamentary and municipal town in Worcestershire and Staffordshire, is the capital of the "Black Country." The ruins of the old castle, which is supposed to date from Saxon times, and is mentioned in Domesday Book, connect it, like many other thriving industrial centres, with the feudal past. In 1585 Sir Amyas Paulet described the town as being the poorest he had ever seen. It was not until the middle of the last century that the discovery of coal and iron in close proximity awoke the place to new prosperity, and conferred vast wealth on the owners of the soil, the Wards of Bixley, who were soon admitted to the peerage as Barons and Earls of Dudley, a title to which they had some claim through marriage with the heiress of its original possessors. Dudley is on the Great Western Railway, about 8 miles N.W. of Birmingham, and is a fairly well-built but not attractive town, containing the usual public buildings, institutions, churches, etc., all of them modern. Besides coal-mining and iron-working, the chief manufactures are nails, machinery, chains, fire-irons, tools, and glass. There are also brass foundries, brickfields, tanneries, and breweries. The borough returns one member to Parliament.