Years ago a colleague once told me that Wednesbury was built on an Iron Age Hillfort. The topography is fairly hilltop, and there are roads that now run downhill with strange level section. Tell-tale signs of ditched.

I have since looked at other towns with the same eye, Tetbury for instance. And Old Sarum outside Salisbury** is a good historical reminder. It is still a hillfort with the outline of a cathedral within, which was demolished when they re-located and built an humungous edifice in the valley. The hillfort became a rotten borough which clearly indicated that it had been a bustling town (aka village) when the cathedral was there. And hillforts (a misnomer) were what Ceaser called opida, they were fortified conurbations. And it would be inevitable that some had continued occupation in one form or another throughout history, and a church at the top, in a sort of Norman corporate identity fashion. Hence Wednesbury (aka Wodensburg) and Walsall (fro Wales sale - eg market town).

** you can see the foundations of the old cathedral.