Where to Stay in Walsall, England

What is Walsall known for?

The New Art Gallery Walsall holds the best-known collection in the borough, while the Walsall Leather Museum records the trade that made this one of the larger industrial towns of the West Midlands. The Church of St Matthew anchors the old parish. Around it sit the Council House and the plainer streets of a Black Country town, with St Martin's Church Walsall and St Peter's Church, Walsall serving quarters further out.

What are the main landmarks in Walsall?

The New Art Gallery Walsall is the one most visitors come for. The Walsall Leather Museum keeps the town's older trade on show. Churches carry much of the rest of the list: the Church of St Matthew, St Martin's Church Walsall, St Andrew's Church, Walsall, St Gabriel's Church, Walsall and the Church of St Lawrence, with the Church of St Mary and Attached Presbytery among them.

Walsall Castle survives in name. The Council House, Fellows Park and the Gorway Ground round it out.

What is the history of Walsall?

A castle came first. Walsall Castle is the oldest name recorded on this ground, and the market town that grew beside it answered to Staffordshire for centuries before the county lines were redrawn and the West Midlands took it in. The Church of St Matthew held the parish.

St Martin's Church Walsall, St Peter's Church, Walsall and the Church of St Michael and All Angels came later, as the settlement spread and each new quarter wanted its own. Industry did the rest. Leather work gave Walsall a trade with a name beyond the Black Country, and the Walsall Leather Museum keeps the tools, the benches and the finished work of it under one roof.

Darlaston, Bentley and Wednesbury were drawn in as the built-up ground closed the gaps between them, and All Saints' Church, Darlaston, Emmanuel Church, Bentley and Christ Church date those separate beginnings. The Council House gave the borough its civic front. Two world wars left their own marks, among them the Memorial to John Henry Carless VC.

Fellows Park and the Gorway Ground carried the sporting side of the same century, and the New Art Gallery Walsall stands at the centre of the modern town.

Where is Walsall?

Three towns box it in. Walsall stands nine miles north-west of Birmingham, seven miles east of Wolverhampton and nine miles south-west of Lichfield, on the ground the Black Country covers. Staffordshire held it historically.

The built-up area runs out through Darlaston, Bentley and Wednesbury, where All Saints' Church, Darlaston, Emmanuel Church, Bentley and The Oval mark the older centres, and The Chuckery lies nearer the middle.

What is the climate of Walsall?

Inland weather, well away from the coast. Walsall stands on the Black Country's inland ground with no sea close enough to steady the swings, so winters run raw and grey while summers stay mild, damp and short of certainty, with rain spread across every month. Frost lingers in shaded streets.

Long June evenings fill Fellows Park and the Gorway Ground, and the New Art Gallery Walsall takes the wet afternoons.

How do you get to Walsall?

Walsall is reached mainly by road. West Bromwich Road leads out of the centre, and the wider West Midlands network puts Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Lichfield each within a short drive, with Walsall's own streets feeding into it from the Black Country side. Darlaston, Bentley and Wednesbury sit on the same local runs.

The Council House stands at the civic centre.