Brierley Hill in the 1980s to become the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. Brierley Hill was originally in Staffordshire, but is now part of the West Midlands metropolitan county since its creation in 1974. Since 2008, Brierley Hill, including the nearby Waterfront Business Park and Merry Hill Shopping Centre, has been designated as the Strategic Town Centre of the Dudley Borough, with the aim of creating a new town centre for the borough. The name Brierley Hill derives from the Old English words 'brer', meaning the place where the Briar Rose grew; 'leah', meaning a woodland clearing; and 'hill'. Largely a product of
Travel Merry Hill and it was completed in 1989). In the early days, the fleet consisted of Carlyle Works bodied Freight Rover Sherpa vehicles. An attraction to customers of the Merry Hill Minibus service was that the buses gave change to passengers not having the exact fare, which was not the case with the incumbent Travel West Midlands. The company intended to operate around 100 vehicles from the time of the centre's completion in November 1989, but stalled at 46 following the early 1990s recession. During 1997 Merry Hill Minibuses was taken over by West Midlands Travel's parent company National Express who continued