Essington
| Essington | |
|---|---|
 Essington
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| Essington shown within Staffordshire | |
| Population | 4,957 (2011) |
| OS grid reference | SJ962034 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Wolverhampton |
| Postcode district | WV11 |
| Dialling code | 01922 |
| Police | Staffordshire |
| Fire | Staffordshire |
| Ambulance | West Midlands |
| EU Parliament | West Midlands |
Essington is a village and civil parish in South Staffordshire, England. It is considered by the Office for National Statistics to be part of the Wolverhampton Urban Subdivision, and is within the West Midlands conurbation.
It is near where the M6 motorway joins the M54 motorway at Junction 10A. Despite its vicinity to the motorways, it is a fairly quiet village, surrounded by fields used for grazing, and for crops.
In the village of Essington, though small, and fairly recently built, there is one place, a public park called Brownshore Lakes (known locally as the pools), which are two adjacent lakes. They are the remains of three coal mining tailing and settling ponds, surrounded by woodland, it is a local meeting place, and home to waterfowl, and other animals thrive which around the lakes and the woods. The 'pools' is a very relaxing place where very few people go every day.
The lakes/ponds mentioned above are now fed from surface drainage of the very large open areas around the M6 and M54. In the days of the underground mines large pumping machines and very large systems of underground pipes which linked the areas mines together were installed to drain these areas. When the mines closed, the area was surface mined using the opencast method and then refilled. On this new ground housing estates were built in the 1980s after the completion of the M54 motorway. In the former industrial use the lakes covered a larger area with the largest a tailings pond this has now been filled and is a large green field in the lakes park. During the underground mining period the coal mines of the area were linked together via the pumps and pipes to remove a very large amount of "dirty" water which needed to be pumped to the surface at this high point. Once the water had been through the tailings and settling ponds it was clean enough to go via the overflow stream down to top up the water levels of the canals. Not much left of that once large industrial system of canal goods loading areas and boat basins which have now been replaced by an Industrial park and public housing estates of Wednesfield, Ashmore Park etc. The Pools are still linked to the remaining underground pipes from the mines, however when the M6 and M54 Motorways were built the large open land areas at the Motorway junction were drained by engineers of the Agriculture Ministry of the time and the water piped through the former opencast and directed into the old tailings fields opposite the ponds. For those interested in the re-use of old Industrial land the area is a treasure. Walk on a pathway around the area you will find the remains just under the surface of old railways, factories, quarries, mines, windmills, ammunition stores, very old moats and mounds. A local guide "Essington Parish Rights of Way Including Wulfrun Way" 2004 has been written by Bryn Whitehouse. This shows many of these features and maps. The Pools Are Also Known Locally As "Dando's" the name 'Dando's' is after Albert Daniels who farmed the field that became the 'Daniel's' pond when the local mine subsided and the field was flooded by water pumped from the mines. The other pond was always known as 'The Green' after the amount of reeds growing there. One other pond existed next to Brownshore Lane. This has been filled in and was known as the 'nurses'pond as it was next to the house lived in by the district nurse. Behind this pond there was a large bank where it was said the dead pit ponies were buried
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