Milking Bank is a residential area of Dudley

Dudley

Dudley is a large town in the West Midlands county of England. At the 2001 census , the Dudley Urban Sub Area had a population of 194,919, making it the 26th largest settlement in England, the second largest town in the United Kingdom behind Reading, and the largest settlement in the UK without...

, West Midlands

West Midlands (county)

The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...

, 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...

.

It is a modern development which began in about 1984 with the construction of new houses in an isolated area more than a mile to the west of Dudley town centre, near the border with Sedgley

Sedgley

Sedgley is an urban village within the West Midlands county of England. Historically a part of Staffordshire, Sedgley was formerly an ancient manor composed of several smaller villages, including Gornal, Gospel End, Woodsetton, Ettingshall, Coseley and Brierley...

, which had been mined for coal

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 since the 19th century. Further developments of private housing took place on this land between Himley Road and Dibdale Road and by the end of the 1980s there were several hundred houses in Milking Bank, as well as a primary school

Milking Bank Primary School

Milking Bank is a state primary school in the West Midlands of England. It is located in the Milking Bank area of Dudley, being situated in the west of the town towards the border with Sedgley. Operating a two-form entry system, it caters for boys and girls aged 3–11...

.

Further development took place after the demolition of nearby Burton Road Hospital

Burton Road Hospital

Burton Road Hospital was a National Health Service hospital situated in Dudley, West Midlands, England.It originally existed within the Sedgley Urban district until that became part of Dudley in 1966...

 in 1994, with the construction of further housing on the north side of Dibdale Road. At the end of the decade, further houses - as well as a Co-operative society supermarket - were built on the west of Milking Bank joining onto Grosvenor Road. This latest development was a mix of private homes as well as ones leased out by a housing association

Housing association

Housing associations in the United Kingdom are independent not-for-profit bodies that provide low-cost "social housing" for people in housing need. Any trading surplus is used to maintain existing homes and to help finance new ones...

.

The estate is served by a public house, the Meadow Lark, as well as a doctor's surgery.

There was once a Spar minimarket that served the needs for quick trips to the shop for the estate, however this burnt down in 2011, arson

Arson

Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...

being the suspected cause.

http://www.west-midlands.police.uk/dudleynorth/n6.asp