B4483

Station Bridge, Coseley

The B4483 is an unremarkable urban B-road running through the town of Coseley between the area of Woodsetton, some 2 km northwest of Dudley town centre, and the area of Wallbrook, near to Dudley Metropolitan Borough's border with City of Wolverhampton Council.

It runs for some 450 m north-north-eastward from a junction with the A457 Sedgley Road before being briefly interrupted by the A4123 Wolverhampton - Birmingham New Road; there's a staggered crossroads here. Our road then passes The Green (where Coseley's War Memorial is), by-passes the main shopping precinct of Coseley (Castle Street in Roseville), and continues past Coseley Railway Station to end at a junction with the B4163 Harding Street in Coseley.

Owing to its short length the history of the B4483 is not fully known. The 1932 Ten-Mile Map suggests that the road had become part of the B4175 by the time of publication - but this could be a misinterpretation or mapping error. Certainly the road was in existence by the 1950s and the B4175 came no closer than Upper Gornal. A more certain mapping error occurred in the 1955 revision of the Ordnance Survey Six Inch map, where the road was labelled as the B4183 in a number of places along its course - clearly an error as it had been labelled correctly in both older and newer maps.

In the 1980s, the bridge carrying the B4483 over the railway was replaced with a new one closer to the station. This straightened the road, crossing the track diagonally rather than at a right-angle. The only remaining evidence of the old route is a secluded cul-de-sac service road that serves a few houses towards Clayton Park, as well as a wider section of pavement before the bridge opposite Havacre Lane, giving an indication of the direction of the previous road.

A little known fact is that Kelly Groucutt of the Electric Light Orchestra, was born on the Gough Road section of the B4483, in the house named 'Church View'. A blue plaque was unveiled on the front of the house in March 2015.