Walsall - Historic Midlands Market Town

Walsall lies in the English Midlands to the north of Birmingham, and within reach of Wolverhampton, and has traditionally been seen as one of the important travel and transportation centers of the country. Lying equidistant between Stoke, the center of the ceramics industry and Birmingham, one of the largest trading cities in the world, Walsall was always a market town, and trade remains one of the most important industries in the city thanks to the large shopping malls and traditional open air market that it still hosts each week.

In total roughly a quarter of a million people live in and around Walsall, making it one of the largest cities in the country. The people of the city have a great deal of choice when it comes to leisure, and there are a large number of impressive buildings in Walsall that date back throughout the history of the place from the modern era back to the times when the town was first developing in the middle ages.

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Walsall is Barr Beacon. This national park lies just outside the city and provides a natural barrier between the city and neighboring Birmingham. Although it is less than a thousand feet above sea level, the peak is actually the highest point between the city and the Ural Mountains in Russia. Around 100,000 people travel to the hill each year in order to enjoy the views over the two cities, and it is a particularly popular place in the summer, when there can be hundreds of people enjoying picnics and relaxing in the sunshine.

Although Walsall does not have its own university, it is the home to a number of students who attend Wolverhampton University's school of art and sports. Around 5,000 students from all over the world live and study in the city, and this gives it a fairly cosmopolitan atmosphere, and means there is a fairly good nightlife in the many pubs around the campus on the weekend.

The Walsall Arboretum was opened in the 1870s just outside the city, and is one of the oldest and most impressive attractions of its kind in the country. It has a very impressive collection of trees from all over the world that have been planted in ornate gardens including one of the largest Giant Sequoias outside the United States, and a Baobab Tree from Africa that is more than a hundred years old.