Wednesbury Archaeology

I sit every evening on the Car Park of Wednesbury`s Art Museum waiting for my Car share companion and I look at this Panel on the side of Morrisons store, so I decided to blip it, and do a little research :


Far from being destroyed during industrial development in the
19th century as was previously believed, Wednesbury of the
1500s and 1600s has survived under the streets and buildings
of Victorian times. Off Lower High Street pottery is now known
to have been produced on a near industrial scale since the
1400s, and the Wednesbury Forge site has revealed extensive
metal working dating back to the 1500s on a site
acknowledged to be one of the biggest and most important of
its type anywhere in Britain. The line of the medieval town ditch,
running under the Wednesbury Museum & Art Gallery, has
shown the town to be much bigger and more important than
was previously believed. Archaeologists have even found the
17th Century remains of that traditional refuge of the
Wednesbury working man, a public house.
A selection of the best of the excavated material, including
pottery and ceramics, glass, leather shoes, gun flints, coins,
timber, buttons and cutlery, some dating back to the 1100s,
will in the future be presented at the Wednesbury Art Gallery
enabling all visitors to share in this remarkable discovery of a previously unknown Wednesbury

Named after the Saxon god of War (Woden) and the
probable site of an iron age fort (burgh) or hill (barrow)
Wednesbury is reputed to have been fortified by Ethelflaed,
daughter of King Alfred, in 916 to protect the borders of the
kingdom of Mercia from Viking raiders. The Domesday Book
of 1086 describes ?Wednesberie? as a manor consisting of
ploughland and meadows surrounded with dense woodland.
?Colepits? are known to have been dug by 1315 and the
industrial development of the town ensued.
With ?Wednesbury Forge? established in 1597 and pottery,
including the renowned ?Wedgebury? ware, produced in
bulk from the 1400s Wednesbury was perhaps the most
important and wealthiest manufacturing town in the West
Midlands before the Industrial Revolution. Industrial
development occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries has
hidden the evidence of its earlier wealth and importance
which is only now being rediscovered through a series of
extensive archaeological excavations throughout the town.
When granted its Charter of Incorporation, by Queen Victoria
in 1886, the Council suitably honoured its inhabitants with
the chosen motto ?Arte, Marte, Vigore?