There is a large bus station in the town centre which has many connections to surrounding towns and communities, including: Bilston, Birmingham, Brierley Hill, Coseley, Cradley Heath, Gornal, Halesowen, Kingswinford, Merry Hill, Oldbury, Pensnett, Rowley Regis, Sedgley, Smethwick, Stourbridge, Tipton, Wall Heath, Walsall, Wednesbury, West Bromwich, Withymoor, Wolverhampton, Wombourne and Wordsley.

Halesowen () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands, England.

Halesowen is included in the Halesowen and Rowley Regis constituency which is held by the Conservative James Morris.

Halesowen is located approximately south-west of Birmingham at the edge of the industrial Midlands.

The centre of Halesowen is home to a Norman church, a football ground ( where non-league Halesowen Town F. C.

Most of the housing stock in Halesowen is privately owned and was built in the 30 years which followed the end of World War II, although some parts of the town are still made up of Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses.

Halesowen is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as being larger than Birmingham.

In the eastern part of Halesowen is Leasowes Park, which is considered to be one of the first natural landscape gardens in England.

Halesowen, as mentioned above, is no longer served by a railway station.

Halesowen Bus Station is located on Queensway, next to the new ASDA supermarket and the Job Centre Plus.

Halesowen is served by local editions of two regional evening papers, the Birmingham based Evening Mail and the Wolverhampton based Express & Star.

The Halesowen area is served by commercial and BBC radio stations broadcasting from Wolverhampton and Birmingham as well as from within Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire.

Halesowen's only own licensed radio station is HCR International ( Halesowen College Radio ) 1386AM and 106. 0-106. 8 FM within the Whittingham Campus which also streams live online from its website.

Halesowen is also the base for Old Halesonians Hockey Club ; who run 5 Men's League teams, a Ladies team and a Badgers team.

Halesowen is the base for two Amateur Dramatic Societies-Startime Variety ( pantomimes in January and Summer Variety shows around July, both at the Cornbow Hall Theatre ) and Mayhem Theatre Company ( comedies and dramas, normally two shows per year at the Leasowes Theatre ).

The Halesowen Scout Band is based in the town and rehearses and performs there regularly.

* Bill Oddie, television actor and presenter, attended the former Halesowen Grammar School which is now Earls High School.

Sylvia Lloyd Heal ( born 20 July 1942 ) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament ( MP ) for Halesowen and Rowley Regis from 1997 to 2010, having previously been the MP for Mid Staffordshire from 1990 to 1992.

The UK headquarters is now in nearby Halesowen, and each year the company provides the city's official Christmas Tree, which is erected in Victoria Square.

Old Halesonians Hockey Club play their home games at Great Park in nearby Rubery, Windsor High School ( Halesowen ), or at Four Dwellings High School in Quinton.

Halesowen was once served by a railway line-in reality two lines which met at an end-on junction at the station.

There are two local weekly newspapers, delivered free to every household in Halesowen, The Halesowen News and The Halesowen Chronicle.

Until the 1950s, it terminated in Halesowen town centre, but was extended approximately two miles eastwards in the 1950s along the former route of the A456, which was by-passed on a new road around the south of the town.

Cradley Heath is often confused with neighbouring Cradley in Halesowen, although the two places have long been in separate local authorities and until 1966 were in separate counties.

Shrewsbury's first ever win at Gay Meadow would occur two weeks later against Halesowen, sparking a run of six consecutive league wins.

Unusually for a parliamentary constituency, Halesowen and Rowley Regis incorporates parts of two different boroughs.

He also worked at Woolworths in Halesowen town for a short period of time.

In November 2007, Nigel Hastilow resigned as Conservative candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis after he wrote an article in the Wolverhampton Express & Star that included the statement: " Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 ' rivers of blood ' speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change Britain irrevocably.

Although predominantly urban or suburban in character, Halesowen borders on green belt land with excellent access to the countryside, for example the Clent Hills.

The court rolls for Halesowen survive to 1272 and show that the majority of migrants to Halesowen in the 14th century were women at 75 %.

In 1972, when still a borough in its own right, Halesowen Council abolished the traditional infant and junior schools and replaced them with first schools for ages 5 to 9 and middle schools for the 9 to 13 age group, but this system was abolished in 1982 and reverted to the previous infant schools for 5 to 7 year olds and junior schools for ages 7 to 11.

* Thomas Attwood, British economist and campaigner for electoral reform, was born at Hawne House, Halesowen on 6 October 1783

* Halesowen, also once a centre for forges, specialising in nail making, but now largely a residential and commercial area.

She was re-elected to Parliament at the 1997 general election for the new West Midlands seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis with a majority of 10, 337 and remained the MP in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

This saw a return to local derbies for the club in 2009 – 10, with Nuneaton Town, Halesowen Town, Stourbridge, Rugby Town, Leamington and Evesham United all lining up against the Pitmen in the Southern League.

It was formed in 1966 by the combination of the existing county borough of Smethwick with the municipal boroughs of Oldbury and Rowley Regis ( along with small sections of Birmingham, Dudley, Tipton, West Bromwich and Halesowen as well as an unpopulated fragment of Brierley Hill ), by recommendation of the Local Government Commission for England.

John Horner, the Labour MP for Oldbury and Halesowen stated that while the boroughs of Oldbury and Rowley Regis had supported the creation of the new county borough in 1961, they no longer did so.

The scheme includes a new canal aqueduct to carry the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and a new railway bridge on the Cross-City Line, and allowance has been made for the reopening of a small part of the Selly Oak to Lapal and Halesowen canal ( Dudley No. 2 Canal ) to enhance the area and provide a focal point.

Current projects include Concerto for Horn and Symphony Orchestra for Ondrej Vrabec ( Principal Horn Czech Philharmonic Orchestra ) and the Central England Ensemble, to be premiered in Birmingham UK in 2012, a commission from the Francis Brett Young society to compose a work based on Young ’ s poem, The Ballad of St Kenelm, to be premiered in Halesowen ( the poet ’ s birthplace ) in 2015, and a new work for solo piano for Duncan Honeybourne.

Newfield Park Primary School primary school located in Halesowen, was built during the 1960s to serve the expanding local area of Hawne.

The Oldbury Railway, which also linked to Albright and Wilson, had both a passenger station, called Oldbury railway station, on Halesowen Road ; and a goods station, Oldbury Goods railway station, at the Birmingham Canal Navigations wharf in Oldbury.

The rest of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough consisted of 5-8 first and 8-12 middle schools ( barring Stourbridge and Kingswinford, which had both retained the traditional 5-7 infant and 7-11 junior schools ) until following the suit of Halesowen and reverting to the traditional ranges in 1990.

* Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin, was born in West Bromwich but brought up in Halesowen and attended both Halesowen Grammar School and King Edward VI Grammar School, Stourbridge ( now Earls High and King Edward VI College respectively ).

The closest towns are Stourbridge and Halesowen, both in the West Midlands conurbation.

Halesowen and Stourbridge had been held by the Conservatives, but both of its replacements were taken by Labour in 1997.

Halesowen and Stourbridge had been held by the Conservatives, but both of its replacements were taken by Labour in 1997.