THE WARLEY DEANERY
The Warley Deanery is one of the 13 deaneries in the Birmingham Diocese.
It is on the western border of the Diocese, mainly in the Borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands. Parts of the parishes on the western edge are in the Borough of Dudley. The Deanery came into being on May 16th 1966, having previously been the Smethwick Deanery. The Deanery comprises of the following parishes :-
Christ Church, Oldbury
St. Giles, Rowley Regis
St. Hilda, Warley Woods
St. James, Rounds Green
St. John, Langley
St. Mark, Londonderry
St. Mary, Bearwood
St. Matthews, (with St. Chad) Smethwick
St. Michael and All Angels, Langley
Old Church, Smethwick
St. Paul, Blackheath
The Resurrection, Smethwick
The Area Dean is Revd. Anthony Perry, Vicar of St. Mary’s Bearwood.
The Deanery Synod comprises of the clergy of the parishes, and lay members elected at their Annual Parochial Church Meetings.
The Lay Chair is Linda Clinton
WARLEY- WEST MIDLANDS
Warley gets its name from "Waer-wulf's Ley" which later became corrupted to Werneleye and then Wernley. Warley used to be a county Borough in its own right before its merger into the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in 1974. Prior to that the re-organisation of local government in the West Midlands on 1st April 1966, saw the County Borough of Smethwick and the Municipal Boroughs of Oldbury and Rowley Regis being incorporated into the newly formed Borough of Warley. Warley would have consisted of a series of scattered villages of which many can trace their origins back to the twelfth century or earlier.The Industrial Revolution and growth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ensured that these village became towns and important industrial centres of the West Midlands. The motto of the County Borough of Warley was that of Unity and Progress and this has been passed on to the Sandwell MBC who still use this motto today on the new Coat of Arms.
Warley was the centre of glass, iron, brass and engineering industries and noted for producing scales and weighing machines, steel tubes, chemicals and tar, nails and screws, plastics, electrical appliances, castings and other engineering products. Many world class firms operated from Warley. A high proportion of these have long gone or moved on as manufacturing suffered in the 70's and 80's. An important development for industry in Warley was the building of the Birmingham to Wolverhampton canal which passed through the area in the mid-eighteenth century.Now part of Sandwell and struggling to establish its individual identity against the nearby Birmingham, Warley has a significant history of tradition and contribution to the West Midlands region.