Town and Architectural Trails in Dudley

Several leaflets can be downloaded below, which give a brief history and guide to some of the important buildings and places within towns in the Dudley Borough, including suggested routes for walks.

The trails include:

• Black Country Canals, which offer a fascinating network of junctions and branches. the scenery varies from industrial sections to surprisingly secluded rural lengths.

• The Bonded Warehouse has a long and chequered history. Discover what it was built for and why the canal was there, by turning the clock back on this trail.

• Delph Locks: There have been locks at the Delph since 1779, and this archaelogical trail explores the flight of locks.

• Dudley Architectural Trail: Dudley possesses many attractive buildings and this trail leads you to key buildings that tell of it's start from Saxon times as "Dodds Ley" through it's growth into a bustling market town.

• Halesowen Town Centre: The site of the present day Halesowen Town Centre was once occupied by a number of small hamlets. Although modern developments have changed the nature of the town much of the old street patterns remain and this trail highlights the few remaining older buildings to help you capture he unmistakenly historic character of the town.

• Stourbridge heritage Trail: much of old Stourbridge remains, and this trail will help you appreciate some of the older and more interesting buildings of the town.

• The Stourbridge Lion and Agenorian Trail: The Stourbridge Lion and Agenorian were, respectively, the first locomotive to run on a commercial railway in the Americas, and the first in the Midlands, a full year before the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Both were built in Stourbridge and this trail gives a glimpse of the heybays of that long past commercial activity in the area.

• The Tecton Trail: Tecton was a group of architects, which exploited the aesthetic potentialities of modern architecture in the 1930s. This trail around Dudley Zoo highlights pioneering examples of the use of reinforced concrete in the 1930s.

• Wollescote Hall, with a rich history dating from the 12th century through to modern times.