BILSTON  , a

market town of Staffordshire, England, 21 M . S.E. of Wolverhampton and 124 N.W. of London, in the Black Country . Pop. of urban district (1901) 24,034 . It is served by the Great Western railway, and by the London & North-Western at Ettingshall Road station . In the vicinity are very productive mines of coal and ironstone, as well as sand of fine quality for casting, and grinding-stones for cutlers . Bilston contains numerous furnaces, forges, rolling and slitting mills for the preparation of iron, and a great variety of factories for japanned and painted goods, brass-work and heavy iron goods . Though retaining no relics of antiquity, the town is very ancient, appearing in Domesday . The parish church of St Leonard, dating as it stands mainly from 1827, is on the site of a building of the 13th century . Bilston suffered severely from an outbreak of cholera in 1832 . The town is within the parliamentary borough of Wolverhampton .