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
Merry Hill Shopping Centre years later when withdrawing from the UK, and by 1990 it had been taken over by Asda, who already had a store in Brierley Hill as well as several others in the wider Black Country area, but surprisingly, the Brierley Hill store remained open. A second shopping centre opened on the ground level in 1987 and the centre was expanded further in early 1988 to include an upper level, although the bulk of the centre was opened on 14 November 1989 - by which time it was the largest shopping centre in Europe. By the time of its completion, Merry