Tipton, United Kingdom

Expansion in the iron and coal industries led to the population of Tipton expanding rapidly through the 19th century, going from 4,000 at the beginning of the century to 30,000 at the end. Tipton gained a reputation as being "the quintessence of the Black Country" because chimneys of local factories belched heavy pollution into the air, whilst houses and factories were built side by side. Several family businesses like James Lister and Sons, an ironmongery, emerged during this time to support industries by providing essential supplies.

Most of the traditional industries which once dominated the town have since disappeared.

In the Tipton Catastrophe of March 1922, 19 girls – as young as 13 – and young women were killed in an explosion at an unlicensed factory that was dismantling surplus World War I munitions.

The Black Country Living Museum in nearby Dudley re-creates life in the early 20th century Black Country, in original buildings which have been rebuilt and furnished, many of them being transported from – or based on – sites originally located in Tipton. There is a residential canal basin at the museum, reflecting Tipton's former status in popular local culture as the 'Venice of the Midlands'.

Some of the town's canals were infilled during the 1960s and 1970s. The towpaths of the remaining canals, the Old and New BCN Main Lines are today a cycling, wildlife and leisure facility.

The landscape of Tipton began to change further from the late 1920s when new housing estates were built by the town's council in response to the growing need to replace slum housing. Among the first council estates to be built were the Shrubbery Estate at Tipton Green, the Tibbington Estate near Princes End (which came under Coseley at the time), the Moat Farm Estate at Ocker Hill (which earned the nickname "Lost City" due to its isolated location), and the Cotterill's Farm Estate at Ocker Hill, the Glebefields Estate at Ocker Hill and Great Bridge. Private houses were also built on smaller developments around the same time. The "Lost City" was integrated with the rest of Tipton as further housing developments sprang up around it, namely The Glebefields Estate and The Gospel Oak Estate.

During the Second World War (1939–1945), Nazi Germany made The Blitz, a bombing campaign against the United Kingdom (7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941). There were a number of air raids on Tipton. On 19 November 1940, three people were killed by a Luftwaffe bomb which was dropped in Bloomfield Road and destroyed several buildings including the Star public house; it was rebuilt after the war and demolished in 1996. Just before Christmas in 1940, an anti-aircraft shell fired from the hills at Rowley Regis fell down the chimney of the Boat Inn, Dudley Road East, Tividale; fatally injuring 12 people at a wedding reception (including the bride, while the groom lost both legs) as well as the resident of an adjacent house. On 17 May 1941, six people died in an air raid in New Road, Great Bridge. Tipton Tavern and New Road Methodist Church were destroyed and a number of nearby houses were damaged. Tipton Tavern landlord Roger Preece was trapped in the rubble but survived with minor injuries.

Tipton Tavern was rebuilt in the 1950s and became the Hallbridge Arms during the 1990s and, more recently, the Pearl Girl, the world's first licensed pearl bar. It closed in 2016 and has since been converted into a day nursery for young children.

The last major council housing development by Tipton Council was the Glebefields Estate part of Ocker Hill and not Princes End as many suggest, due to Princes End not being part of Tipton at this time, and built during the first half of the 1960s. A stretch of the Wednesbury Oak Loop Canal was filled in to make way for it. The last major private housing development to be built in the Municipal Borough of Tipton was the Foxyards Estate, on land straddling the borders with Dudley and Coseley, in the mid 1960s.

By the end of the 1970s, most of the housing in Tipton built before 1890 had been demolished. Owen Street, the town's main shopping area, was redeveloped between 1979 and 1982, with a reduced number of shop units as well as new low-rise council houses and flats.

In 1956, one of Britain's first comprehensive schools, Tividale Comprehensive School, was opened in Tipton near the border with Oldbury, in the area which became part of Warley a decade later and was not included in the modern Tipton DY4 postal district.

Tipton's first gasworks was opened in 1958 and redeveloped as a state-of-the-art naphtha gas plant by 1965, but owing to the emergence of North Sea gas, the gasworks closed in 1975 and stood empty for a decade before demolition. The site of the gas plant was redeveloped as the 'Standbridge Park housing estates' in the 1990s.