INDUSTRY

These concentrations have continued though the railways are much less used. Early breweries at Wellhead, Kynochs and other firms, have created a compact industrial area uninterrupted by housing at Holford, engaged in a multiplicity of light engineering operations. Heavy industry has developed on the Smethwick border, but there is the modern Middlemore estate of small factories with varying products at the West Bromwich edge replacing the old Carriage Works. Elsewhere there are scattered factories, usually small, roughly in a half-mile band on both sides of Soho Road.

Mining of the thick coal began at Sandwell Park Pit in l875, and at Hamstead eight years later. The coal lay at around l845 feet. The seams were uneconomic to work after the war, and all trace of mining near Handsworth has now disappeared.

Although the growth of industry in Handsworth accompanied the spread of housing during the three decades from 1870, much of the labour required was female, and the majority of male workers continued to travel from their new tunnel-back terrace homes to their old jobs in central Birmingham by tram and train. The direction of travel has changed for some, with the growth of Witton and Tyburn industry, but still for most Handsworthies work is outside the district.