Wikipedia
Birchills is a residential area of Walsall in the West Midlands of England. The appropriate Walsall ward is Birchills Leamore. The population of this ward taken at the 2011 censua was 14,775.
It is situated several hundred yards west of the town centre and is an established area containing many different housing types, though Victorian/Edwardian terraced houses and inter-war council houses are the most frequent type.
Reedswood Park is located in Birchills, as is Pouk Hill - a hill which inspired a 1970s Slade song.
Birchills has an above average proportion of ethnic minorities living in it, mostly Pakistani Muslims.
Several tower blocks, built during the 1960s, are situated in the east of Birchills, near Walsall town centre. Murderer Raymond Leslie Morris was living in one of these flats with his wife at the time of his arrest on 4 November 1967.
A power station was opened in the north of Birchills in 1949, just a few years before the Beechdale council estate was developed at the far side. This power station served the Walsall area for 33 years until its closure in October 1982, although it was not demolished until March 1987. The site of the power station was redeveloped for housing and commerce during the 1990s.
Birchills is a historic, ‘Joey’ boat with a small day cabin, built in 1953 by Ken Keay of Walsall, ‘Birchills’ it is one of the last wooden day boats made and was used to carry coal to Wolverhampton Power Station.
This boat is double-ended and the mast and rudder could be changed from one end to the other. This enabled its use in narrow canals or basins where there was no room to turn the boat around.
It is now owned by the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, where it is based and can be seen dockside in the Lord Ward’s Canal Arm. Birchill's underwent major restoration in early 2015 following £62,000 worth of donations.