Smethwick Register Office Closed in 1966 and post July 1837 civil registers moved to -
Birmingham or Cannock or Warley or West Bromwich.
Before the late 18th century Smethwick was an outlying hamlet of the South Staffordshire village of Harborne, a district of scattered cottages and small farms, country lanes, heaths and woodland. There were nailmakers and blacksmiths from at least the mid 16th century.
It was decided in the 1760’s that a canal should be cut through Smethwick, to carry coal from the Black Country to the booming industries of Birmingham.The canal was spanned by the elegant Galton Bridge, (Grade 1 Listed), then the longest single-span bridge in the world.
The coming of the railway in 1852 alongside the canal, together with the availability nearby of raw materials such as coal, and iron, explains why Smethwick became of such importance as a manufacturing centre.
Many industries were soon attracted to the area, some of which included Chances Glasswork and The Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Works. Smethwicks reputation for engineering continued to grow, as did the size of its population, which by 1901 was 54,539 as oposed to 1,097 in 1801.
Smethwick’s coat of arms became redundant in 1966, as it lost its status as a single County Borough and was absorbed into the new County Borough of Warley in Worcestershire. Then in 1974 it became part of the newly created Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in the West Midlands.
The first church there was built in 1732 but was just a chapel of ease of St.Peter's in Harborne.
Christenings and Burials
for the Old Chapel were recorded in registers at that church but from about
1745/50 until around 1840, Marriages were only recorded in the Harborne
Parish Register even though the actual wedding ceremony took place in the
Old Church. This was a case of the vicar(s) at Harborne making sure
that they got the money for it. In 1842 the Parish of North Harborne
(Smethwick really) was legally taken out of Harborne proper and over the
next 50 years new Ecclesiastical Districts in Smethwick were created but it
was not until 1892 that the Parish of Smethwick was finally legally
constituted under that name and gained complete independence from the old
Harborne Parish.
The hangover from all of this was that for census purposes, Smethwick still
was classified as Harborne (even though they were/are in different counties
- Staffordshire and Warwickshire) right up to the 1891census.
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