West Bromwich
— — the colour of a Saturday at The Hawthorns.
Not only on a wall.
“A market town in the Black Country, west of Birmingham, with a long industrial spine and a football ground at its centre. The Hawthorns has held West Bromwich Albion since 1900, the highest pitch in the English league. Oak House still stands in its garden, a Tudor timber-framed survivor a few minutes from the high street. Sandwell Valley opens green to the north.
West Bromwich, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
West Bromwich sits in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, about ten kilometres northwest of Birmingham city centre, within the historic county boundary of Staffordshire and the cultural region known as the Black Country. The 2021 census recorded a population of just over 80,000. The town grew through coal, iron, and spring-making in the nineteenth century and lost most of that base by the late twentieth. The Midland Metro tram runs through West Bromwich Central on its way between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, anchoring the high street.
The Hawthorns, home of West Bromwich Albion since 1900, sits on the boundary with Handsworth at 168 metres above sea level, the highest league ground in England. Match days bring the town centre to a stop. Oak House, a Tudor timber-framed manor restored by Alderman Reuben Farley in the 1890s, is open free of charge on most weekday afternoons. Sandwell Valley Country Park spreads across 660 hectares north of the high street, with footpaths along the River Tame and an RSPB reserve.
The town's older bones are timber rather than stone. Oak House, built in the late 1500s for the Turton family of yeoman ironmasters, is one of the finest surviving timber-framed houses in the West Midlands. The Manor House on Hall Green Road, a moated medieval hall first documented in the thirteenth century, survives in fragment. The 1875 town hall on the High Street, with its tall Italianate clock tower, is the most visible Victorian piece. Most of the rest came down in the post-war redevelopment.