Ocker Hill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ocker Hill is a residential area of Tipton in the West Midlands of England.
It is situated in the northern part of the town, on the main A461 road between Dudley and Wednesbury. The area was first developed during the first half of the 19th century as Tipton became extensively developed for industry during the Industrial Revolution. St Mark's parish church was built in 1849 to serve the newly developed area.
The most famous landmark in Ocker Hill is the electric power station off Leabrook Road, which included two cooling towers. The cooling towers were recognisable for miles around, but they were levelled in 1985. Housing has since been built on the site. The power station itself remained open until 1996.
The town received a railway station in 1864, serving the short line between the Bloomfield area of Tipton and the township of Wednesbury. The station closed in 1890, only to re-open five years later. But the station closed again in 1916 as a wartime economy measure and never re-opened, though the line remained open to goods trains until 1980. The trackbed between Ocker Hill and Princes End was quickly converted into a pedestrian walkway that gave some much-needed greenery to a depressed industrial area, which subsequently suffered badly as a result of de-industrialisation during the 1980s. The final stub of the line, connecting Wednesbury to Ocker Hill Power Station, remained open until February 1991.
Ocker Hill has been served by a primary school since the 1850s, though the original buildings were replaced during the 1970s.
