Merry Hill Shopping Centre closing in June 1990. A further blow came when the local council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough, announced that it was bringing in parking charges throughout the area; this turned more shoppers away from local town centres, and towards the Merry Hill Centre, where parking remains free. Though there have been plans for introducing parking charges at the centre, this has been criticised, ironically, due to fears of impacting trade. In 2008, Merry Hill Centre, along with nearby Brierley Hill, was redesignated as the 'strategic town centre' of the Dudley Borough, and thus the focus of future local government investment. The Merry
The Belfry (shopping centre) single large store. In March 2017 it was confirmed that the newly-configured store would be occupied by H&M from that spring. Housed on Car Park level one, above Marks & Spencer, the Royal Earlswood Museum is a small collection of some of the very few exhibits from the Royal Earlswood Asylum which was opened in 1847 and closed in 1997. Earlswood is a small town just up the hill from Redhill, and is far closer to the actual hill considered to be the original red hill than the town Redhill itself. The Belfry (shopping centre) The Belfry is a shopping