Quarry Bank

Quarry Bank is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England, which exists within the Brierley Hill DY5 postal district.

Locally, the name is often pronounced, "Quarry Bonk" (In Black Country Dialect) The Black Country Bugle local newspaper

Originally the area was a remote part of the parish of Kingswinford, included in Pensnett Chase. The earliest settlements in Quarry Bank were smallholdings, where an industrial worker such as a nailer lived. Early industrial development took place the early 17th century around the Cradley Forge.

Quarry Bank acquired its own parish status in September 1844. It had an urban sanitory authority and so became an urban district of Staffordshire from 1894. However in 1934, it amalgamated with the Brierley Hill urban district. This became part of the county borough of Dudley in 1966 and then the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in West Midlands since 1974.

Quarry Bank has become greatly affected by the adjacent Merry Hill Shopping Centre (which was developed between 1984 and 1989) which has bought high volumes of traffic along the High Street. This has meant demolition of more than 30 homes on the main Merry Hill road in 1997, the closure of the top end of the former High Street (now Sun Street) in 1998, and construction of a new replacement section of High Street to try and cope with traffic.

An unusual feature of Quarry Bank is its long steep High Street, hence "Bank", which slopes from the bottom end where it meets the neighbouring town of Cradley to the top at the junction with Thorns Road. Clinging to the hillside and varying from very steep to almost flat, it has changed little, except for modernisation of shop fronts. Major retail chains have bypassed the town, leaving just small independent traders and public houses.

In 2008, Quarry Bank library was closed, despite protests by local residents and local councillors. The library building was then sold off by Dudley Council, to become a privately run gym. The money raised from the sale was used to fund improvements to libraries in other parts of the Borough. No satisfactory explanation was given by the council for the closure.

The library was replaced by what the council terms a "library link" in a local community centre. This is open part-time, manned only 10 hours per week, and carries a tiny stock of books (1500) to serve a large community.

In 2011, Saltwells House, a historic house which Dudley Council had allowed to fall into decay was demolished. Future plans for the site are not known, though it is suspected the site will be sold off to private developers.

A local landmark is Mount Pleasant Primary School, which was opened in the west of the old village on 10 September 1888, with pupil numbers increasing from 43 to 205 during its first few months. The school's first head teacher was Mr W.E. Hunt, who remained at the helm until 1930. The school's current head teacher, Mrs J Hartill, is the eighth to have held the position in more than 120 years. The school covers the 3-11 age range, including a nursery unit which opened in the early 1990s around the time that the existing school buildings were expanded. It also had 12 year olds on its roll from 1972 to 1990

The other local primary school is Quarry Bank Primary School, in the High Street, which opened in 1935 and was rebuilt in 2011.

The local secondary school is Thorns Community College, an 11-16 comprehensive, which opened in September 1977 to replace the former boys and girls secondary modern schools in Coppice Lane, which had been built in the 1930s. The first building at the site actually opened about five years earlier as an annexe to the Coppice Lane site. Three more buildings were added at the site between 1980 and 1991, by which time the school had 1,200 pupils on its roll.