The Urban District of Coseley, located in the Black Country in Central England, was formed in 1894 when the Ancient Parish and Manor of Sedgley was divided into two separate districts following local government changes.  The vast Parish of Sedgley consisted of nine villages: Sedgley, Cotwall End, Gospel End, Upper Gornal, Lower Gornal, Woodsetton, Coseley, Ettingshall and Brierley.  The village of Coseley became the administrative centre and the new Urban District also included the villages of Woodsetton, Ettingshall and Brierley.  This Ettingshall was not the present day area in the western part of Bilston, but an area stretching from south of Hurst Hill to Parkfields.  When the northern edges of Ettingshall grew, a new village was built over the Bilston border than was known as Ettingshall New Village before becoming simply known as Ettingshall.  Brierley was a village that became "lost", by the nineteenth century it consisted of parts of Bradley, Princes End and Gospel Oak, but continued to be part of Sedgley Parish.  Following the division of the Parish into two Urban Districts, the majority of the original bounadaries were kept, with the exception of Dudley Castle, which was actually in Staffordshire and Sedgley Parish and then Coseley Urban District until 1928.

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Following the First World War, the suggestion for an avenue of trees as the Coseley war memorial came from Mr George Sankey of the famous Bilston group of factories in late 1927.  The Birmingham New Road had recently been built through the District and George Sankey suggested to Coseley Urban District Council that the new road could have trees planted in memory of servicemen who died in the war.  The council agreed to this suggestion and it was recorded in early 1928 that 200 trees would be provided by both Mr Sankey as well as Major Thompson from John Thompson Ltd, an even larger employer on the Bilston/Wolverhampton/Coseley border.  In March 1928 The clerk of Coseley Council (the modern equivalent to clerk is chief executive) contacted the Express & Star to ask for details on the Coseley servicemen who lost their lives.

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The dedication of the Coseley Avenue of Remembrance took place on 20th May 1928.  Coseley Council produced a leaflet mentioning the dedication being by Reverend J.C. Rose, vicar of St. Chad's Church, West Coseley who was also honorary chaplain to H.M. Forces and that the vicar was assisted by Reverend A.L. Barnes, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptish Chapel in Coseley.  The Express & Star reported on Mat 21st 1928 that The Last Post and The Reveille were played by the 6th Staffordshire Regiment and National Anthem was perfomed by the 6th Battalion of the South Staffs Regiment.  The newspaper also reported that members of The Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Army Medical Corps, The Royal Army Service Corps and Royal Air Force attended, as well as ex-servicemen.  A photograph also shows a colonel from the South Staffordshire Regiment placing a plaque on one of the memorial trees.

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Although Coseley Urban District Council's minutes mentioned that 200 trees were planted, the exact figure is sadly not known.  The Express & Star reported  in the same article that the Avenue of Remembrance was in memory of "350 Coseley men", but no documents of how many trees were planted exists any more.  Following the abolition of Coseley Council in 1966 and dividing the district between Dudley, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, a number of documents including a plan of the Avenue of Remembrance were lost.

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Each tree had cast iron railings and a metal plaque with the serviceman's name and number.  Except for a brief undated note by Coseley Urban District Council that refers to the location of three specific trees and the servicemen whose names they carried, it is not known out of all the other servicemen where their trees were located.  In the early 1950s, Staffordshire Country Council replaced a nunber of the trees that had to be removed for road layout changes and a new bus stop and it was mentioned by Coseley Council that all trees that were damaged or blown down were always replaced.

 

The railings were also removed at some point, it is not known when and eventually following the Birmingham New Road parts of Coseley being split between Dudley and Wolverhampton, the plaques containing each serviceman's name were removed and it is not known what happened to them.  Both Dudley and Wolverhampton Councils have no record of the plaques.  After Coseley was divided between authorities, Dudley and Wolverhampton Councils eventually forgot the significance of the trees as the years passed.

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In the late 1990s, a number of people in Coseley, or rather in the central part of the area under Dudley's control, campaignged for a memorial to be erected on the green known as Grange Park opposite Silver Jubilee Park alongside the Birmingham New Road.  This memorial was also dedicated in memory of Coseley men who had lost their lives in conflicts following the First Word War and although it mentions that the trees "in this area form the Coseley Avenue of Remembrance", it doesn't specify that the trees ran for around three miles from Parkfields to Priory Road, and Wolverhampton Council weren't consulted about the memorial despite the fact that half of it was now within their borough.

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In 2011 after I had learnt about the Avenue of Remembrance, I contacted Dudley and Wolverhampton Councils to see if the trees could be properly recognised and whether more could be planted in order to have a complete row from one end of the historic Coseley border to the other.  More trees were planted by both councils and Wolverhampton also created a memorial for their part of Coseley, explaining the significance of the trees.  I also researched the Coseley servicemen who died and found a total 0f 378.  Research was also carried out by Black Country war researcher Michael Harris as well as Sedgley Local History Society and Black Country Society member Lawson Hunt.  In addition, it was found that eleven other servicemen who were either commemorated on church memorials in Coseley or buried in the district, actually came from outside the area.

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In recent years, a new memorial to Coseley's only VC, Private Thomas Barratt, was erected on Grange Park.  Thomas was a First World War soldier who received his award posthoumously and researcher Michael Harris also campaigned for a new larger memorial that now also stands on Grange Park.  This memorial also features Coseley Urban District's coat of arms, from the days when it was one of the largest Urban Districts in the country.

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