Beechdale
Encyclopedia
Beechdale, originally named Gypsy Lane Estate, is a housing estate
Housing estate
A housing estate is a group of buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance...

 in Walsall
Walsall
Walsall is a large industrial town in the West Midlands of England. It is located northwest of Birmingham and east of Wolverhampton. Historically a part of Staffordshire, Walsall is a component area of the West Midlands conurbation and part of the Black Country.Walsall is the administrative...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, that was developed predominantly during the 1950s and 1960s.

Beechdale Infant School for 5-7 year olds opened on the estate in 1955 in Remington Road, followed by the 7-11 junior school in 1959. These schools later merged to form a single primary school and remained open until July 2006, being demolished in early 2007.

Hatherton Lane Primary School (which originally opened to infants in 1956 and juniors in 1960) is now the only primary school in the area.

Just to the north of the estate is Frank F. Harrison Community School
Frank F. Harrison Community School
Frank F. Harrison Engineering College is a comprehensive secondary school located in Bloxwich, Walsall, West Midlands, England. It serves the south-western side of Bloxwich which includes the areas of Beechdale and Leamore....

, which opened in 1965.

Beechdale Football Club, the local football team, play and train on a football pitch within the estate. The team has had considerable success in recent years within its division. There are also popular pool, snooker and darts teams on the estate.

Noddy Holder
Noddy Holder
Neville John "Noddy" Holder MBE is an English musician and actor. He was the lead vocalist and guitarist with the rock band Slade....

, the lead singer of Slade
Slade
Slade are an English rock band from Wolverhampton, who rose to prominence during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. With 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number ones, the British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles...

, grew up on the estate after moving there as a child from Caldmore
Caldmore
Caldmore is one of the villages that make up the town of Walsall. The name is pronounced "Kar-ma" by the local populace.-History:The area was an important junction of roads which created a triangular shaped green called Caldmore Green...

; his parents were among the estate's original residents in the 1950s. Another famous former resident of the estate is Judas Priest & Martin Degville of Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Sigue Sigue Sputnik were a British new wave band created in 1982 by the former Generation X bassist Tony James. The band had three UK Top 40 hit singles, including the song "Love Missile F1-11".-Early years:...

.
The roads on the estate take their names from discoverers and inventors such as George Stephenson
George Stephenson
George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives...

, Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner
Edward Anthony Jenner was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire...

, Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

. The homes on the estate are of a common design and layout with two or three bedrooms. However, the western part of the estate that borders with the M6 motorway
M6 motorway
The M6 motorway runs from junction 19 of the M1 at the Catthorpe Interchange, near Rugby via Birmingham then heads north, passing Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester, Preston, Carlisle and terminating at the Gretna junction . Here, just short of the Scottish border it becomes the A74 which continues to...

was built in the 1960s and many of the houses have a slightly different layout. Several blocks of 3-storey flats also exist on the estate with two bedrooms in each flat.
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