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Stourbridge's Western Boundary, 2017

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The present-day administrative boundaries around Stourbridge are the result of a long and complex series of organizational changes, land transfers and periods of settlement, invasion and warfare dating back more than two thousand years. Perhaps the most interesting section of the boundary is that to the west of Stourbridge which currently separates Dudley Metropolitan Borough from Kinver in Staffordshire. This has been the county boundary for a millennium, and its course mirrors the outline of the medieval manors of Oldswinford and Pedmore; the Domesday hundred of Clent; Anglo-Saxon royal estates, the Norman forest of Kinver and perhaps the 7th-9th century Hwiccan kingdom as well as post-Roman tribal territories. The boundary may even have its roots in earlier (though probably more diffuse) frontiers dating back to prehistoric times.