Priory Estate

The Priory Estate is so named because it is located near the Priory ruins and Priory Park. It stands on the land which once straddled the border of Dudley County Borough and Sedgley Urban District, which were in the counties of Worcestershire and Staffordshire respectively. The borders were moved back several hundred yards in 1926 when Dudley Council purchased the land with a view to building council houses to rehouse more than 2,000 families from town centre slums. Hundreds of council houses had already been built across the Dudley Borough in the last decade, but the Priory Estate was to be the largest council housing development yet in the area as the town's slum problem was still far…

On 1 May 2003, the British National Party gained one its first councillors, when Simon Darby was elected to the Castle and Priory ward (which includes the Priory Estate) in the council elections. The area had previously been represented by three Labour Party councillors. Darby had gained 26.2% of the vote in Castle and Priory a year earlier, and on being elected he obtained almost half of the votes cast. In 2003, Castle and Priory was the most deprived ward in the whole Dudley borough, and among the 7% most deprived wards in England. Many local people also saw the BNP as the answer to the Priory Estate's many social problems. House repairs weren't being carried out efficiently, the local…