Tipton

Tipton is an industrial town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands County in England. It had a population of 38,777 at the 2011 UK Census. It is located northwest of Birmingham and southeast of Wolverhampton. It is also contiguous with nearby towns of Darlaston, Dudley, Wednesbury and Bilston. Historically within Staffordshire and briefly Worcestershire. It is located between both Wolverhampton and Birmingham. It incorporates the surrounding villages and suburbs of Tipton Green, Ocker Hill, Dudley Port, Horseley Heath and Great Bridge. Tipton was an urban district until 1938, when it became a municipal borough. Much of the Borough of Tipton was transferred into West Bromwich County Borough in 1966, but parts of the old borough were absorbed into an expanded Dudley borough and the newly created County Borough of Warley. Along with the rest of West Bromwich and Warley, Tipton was moved into the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough in 1974. Tipton gains its name from the Anglo-Saxon name 'Tibba' followed by 'tun', the Old English word for farm or settlement. The town of Tipton was recorded as Tibintone in the Domesday Book of 1086, meaning Tibba's estate. The present spelling of Tipton derives from the 16th century. Until the 18th century, Tipton was a collection of small hamlets. Industrial growth started in the town when ironstone and coal were discovered in the 1770s. A number of canals were built through the town and later railways, which greatly accelerated its industrialisation. James Watt built his first steam engine in Tipton in the 1770s, which was used to pump water from the mines. In 1780, James Keir and Alexander Blair set up a chemical works there, making alkali and soap on a large scale. The 1801 census records 834 houses with 872 families living in Tipton: 46 houses were stated as being empty. An adult population of 4,280 is recorded with males numbered at 2,218 and slightly fewer females at 2,062. Iron making and mining were the main employment for the population.