Black Country Living Museum

Black Country Living Museum
The main village street
Established	1978
Location	Dudley, West Midlands
Type	Local history
Director	Andrew Lovett
Website	http://www.bclm.com/

Trolleybuses at the Black Country Living Museum. The rear (dark green and cream) vehicle is from Derby and the front (light green and yellow) vehicle is from Wolverhampton. The red bus in the distance is a BMMO motor bus.

The Black Country Living Museum (formerly The Black Country Museum) is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings, located in Dudley in the West Midlands of England it is close to Dudley Castle in the centre of the Black Country conurbation. The museum occupies 105,000 square metres (26 acres) of former industrial land partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard, disused lime kilns and former coal pits. It was first opened in 1978, and since then many more exhibits have been added to it.

The Museum preserves some notable buildings from around the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton; mainly in a specially built village. Most of the buildings are original, relocated from their original sites. As a living museum, these form a base from which knowledgeble, local demonstrators portray life in the period from the 1850s to the 1950s.

The Museum is constantly changing as new exhibits, especially buildings in the village, are being added.

Museum - general description

Canal boat at the Black Country Living Museum.

A prominent landmark on the Tipton Road passing the main entrance is the frontage of Rolfe Street Baths, relocated from Smethwick. To the left of the main entrance is a more conventional exhibition area with displays of a number of artefacts made in the Black Country. This includes not only machinery but, various kinds of vehicles, and the iron products which are a major feature of Black Country industry. It also includes more fragile items such as glassware, reflecting the centuries old industry of lead crystal glass production as well as the Joseph Chance glass works between Oldbury and Smethwick.

Electric trams and trolleybuses transport visitors from the entrance in a re-created factory to the village area with thirty buildings situated by the canal basin. The museum is one of only three in the UK with working trolleybuses, the others being The Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft and the East Anglia Transport Museum near Lowestoft. Nearby Walsall retained its trolleybuses until 1970. The village is only a short walk from the main entrance, passing the Newcomen atmospheric engine and 1930s fairground.

Coal mine displays include underground workings, colliery surface buildings and a replica of the 1712 Newcomen steam engine. In all, forty-two separate displays have either been re-erected or built to old plans to create a living open air museum.

Visitors to the museum may also take a narrowboat trip on the adjacent canal, into the Dudley Tunnel.

Exhibition area

Ruby glass sweet bowl.

Located by the main entrance is the exhibition area with an introduction to the Black Country and a selection of local artefacts. The BCLM is close to the site where Thomas Dudley first mastered the technique of smelting iron with coal instead of wood charcoal and making iron which was pure enough for industrial use. Thus having a claim to be the birthplace of the industrial revolution, the Black Country is famous for its wide range of steel-based products from nails to the anchor and anchor chain for The Titanic. A representative range of smaller items are displayed at the BCLM.

It is also home to a working replica of a Thomas Newcomen atmospheric engine; an invention which was first successfully put to use in nearby Tipton in 1712. The Museum's reconstruction was based on a print of the engine engraved by Thomas Barney, filemaker of Wolverhampton, in 1719.

Glass working was a major Black Country industry. One source of skills in decorative glassware was refugees such as the Huguenots, leading to major producers of crystal glassware setting up in the area.

The Village and Old Trades

Glass engraver at work in a workshop in the village.

On the low ground at the northern end of the Museum, houses, shops, workshops and public buildings have been rebuilt to create a single early 20th century village, peopled by staff in period costume. This village is intended to preserve a cross section of the social and industrial history of the Black Country.

Some of these buildings are still used in their original function, such as St. James's School, the Brass Foundry, the Bottle and Glass pub, T. Cook's sweet shop, the Darby Hand Methodist Chapel and the 'chippy'. Others are faithful replicas of their last use, with goods in the windows. Still others are only shells of the originals, such as the bath house.

The Brook Street Back to Back Houses from Woodsetton date from the 1850s, and were originally home to colliers, farm workers and ironworkers. Behind the 1880s Chainmaker's House from Lawrence Lane in Old Hill is a traditional backyard chainshop from Claremont Street. At the centre of the village, opposite the pub and chapel, stands the Hardware and Ironmonger's Shop from Piper's Row in Wolverhampton.

St. James's School shows lessons and school life from the turn of the 19th to 20th century. The school building was that of St James's School which opened in the Eve Hill area of Dudley in 1842 for pupils aged 5–11. However, it was an infants school only from 1906 with junior pupils transferring to Jessons School. It was refurbished in 1912 and remained open until July 1972, when it finally shut its doors after 130 years. However, it remained in use for a school for a further eight years as an annexe of the reorganised Jessons Middle School (formerly the junior school) until a new school building opened on the Jessons site in 1980. That was the end of the building as a school after 138 years, but it would survive for another a decade at its Eve Hill site. When Jessons Middle School vacated the building, it was converted into a youth centre before falling short of modern health and safety standards and closing in 1989. The Black Country Museum officials then made the decision to transfer the building to the museum site and the relocation was completed by October 1990, with the exhibit opening the following year.[1]

A short private canal branch, constructed to serve the 1842 limekilns, encloses the village on three sides. This allows the role of waterways in Black Country history to be portrayed. Alongside the canal basin is a forge where chain-making is demonstrated and a traditional wooden boat dock.

While some food products may be sold, modern health regulations forbid the public sampling the delicious traditionally made bread from the village bakery.

Recent Developments - The Old Birmingham Road

The Old Birmingham Road links St James’s School with the Cradley Heath Workers’ Institute. Here buildings have been set in the 1930s to tell the story of the Black Country in the years leading up to the Second World War. Hobbs & Sons fish and chip shop and H. Morrall’s gentlemen's outfitters have been returned to their 1935 condition. The building housing these two shops comes from Hall Street, Dudley and dates to the late 18th century but was refaced with bright red pressed brickwork in 1889. The impressive tiled interior of Hobbs features hand painted tiled wall panels which have carefully restored. The frying range is of a design patented in 1932 and made by E.W. Proctor of Huddersfield, Yorkshire. In the 1930s many of Joseph Hobbs’s customers worked in nearby factories or shops. Today visitors can eat their fish and chips in the reconstructed saloon with its wooden benches or walk through the cart entrance to the modern Hobbs Courtyard Café situated in the back yard. Next door, visitors can buy souvenir 1930s style handkerchiefs, ties, scarves, gloves and hats in Harry Morrall’s menswear shop.

The next four buildings were rescued from Birmingham Street, Oldbury and date to about 1860. The block is dominated by the impressive green painted facia of Humphrey Brothers, builders’ merchants, who occupied these premises from 1921; it is a replica of the shop front as it was in about 1932. Humphreys sold fireplaces, toilets and a wide range of building supplies including ‘Walpamur’, a flat paint used for internal walls. The motorcycle shop is based on the business of A. Hartill & Sons which was located in Mount Pleasant, Bilston. The window contains a display of six motor bikes of Black Country manufacture dating from 1929-34. Next door is the tobacco shop of Alfred Preedy & Sons, a well known firm of wholesale and retail tobacconists, established in Dudley in 1868. James Gripton owned a radio shop in Birmingham Street from the 1920s and this reconstruction, set in 1939, contains ‘new’ and second radios for sale, some of which date to the 1920s.

The brick tunnel and cart entrance provide access to a late 1930s kitchen with an electric cooker made by Revo of Tipton. There is a radio workshop behind Griptons and then the stairs lead to two first floor living rooms and two bedrooms which are all set in the late 1930s and furnished with original 1930s style furniture and wall paper.

The Cradley Heath Workers’ Institute was built with surplus funds raised during the strike of Black Country women chain makers in 1910 for a minimum wage. The Arts and Crafts style building was designed by the Black Country architect, Albert Thomas Butler, and opened on 10 June 1912. The Institute became a centre for educational meetings, social gatherings and trade union activities in Cradley Heath. Re-erected at the Museum it stands as a monument to a campaign to establish a national minimum wage in the ‘sweated trades’ where people worked long hours for poverty wages typically in appalling conditions. The building contains reconstructed offices, a news room with a digital interpretation of the background to the strike and a large hall which is used for a wide range of activities inclding theatre performances and concerts.

1930's Fairground

The 1930s fairground is located just past the toll house. Originally a travelling fairground the now settled 1930's fairground would have brought entertainment to people a century or so ago. It would set up on a piece of waste ground and for a few days provide a range of thrills, entertainment and a change for those who might never go on holiday. The fairground includes a helter skelter and The Ark ride. The Ark would have been the latest thing in high-speed rides when introduced in the 1920s; as with many fairground rides it was updated over the years but fortunatley it was not converted into a waltzer. It remains one of the few 'fourlift' Arks in the country.

The Transport Collection

The size of the museum site provides the opportunity to demonstrate many of the road transport exhibits which were both used and made in the Black Country.

Museum trams

Dudley tram 34

Dudley tram No. 5 operating at the museum in 1990

• Dudley Tram No 5 built in 1920. This was the Museum's first tram. It is currently in semi-retirement as it has worked much more here than for its original owners; it is currently out of service undergoing attention to its trolleypole and bodywork.
• Wolverhampton Horse Tram No 23 built in 1892. It is the Museum's oldest tram, and is currently on display at the back of the Tram Depot.
• Dudley Tramcar No 34 built in 1919. Returned to traffic in 1997 after restoration, it is now used regularly at the museum.
• Wolverhampton Open Top Tramcar No 49 built in 1909. Returned to traffic in 2004 after a 25 year restoration, is now in regular service in the museum.

Motor Buses

• Daimler CVG6 GEA 174 built in 1948. Currently undergoing restoration, the framework is complete and the main outer body panels are going on; completion is planned in another two years.
• Midland Red BMMO D9 6342 HA. In service following restoration.

Trolley Buses

Until early 2011 The Black Country Museum ran a number of trolley buses in service on certain days, unlike the tram which is operated 7 days a week. The route was one of the few double deck trolley bus services left in the world, as most of the worlds trolley buses are single deckers.

The museums fleet numbered three resident trolley buses from the Black Countries two former trolley bus networks, and at one time several visiting trolley buses most of which has some sort of connection with the Black Country. Unlike Birmingham's tram service, Birmingham Corporation Trolley Buses never operated in the Black Country. The Resident Fleet is listed bellow;

• Walsall Corporation Transport 862 – A Sunbeam (of Wolverhampton) F4A with a Willowbrook Body, it was built in 1955 and retired from Walsall in 1970 on the closure of the trolleybus network.

• Wolverhampton Corporation Transport 433 – Another Sunbeam and body work By C. H. Roe, this time a W4 built in 1946 and was retired with the rest of Wolverhampton’s trolley buses in 1967.

• Wolverhampton 78 – A Guy Built 1931 Trolleybus that still requires restoration.

During January 2011 thieves broke in and stole part of both the tram and trolley bus overhead wires, and although the tram service is back in operation the trolley buses have not started running and there is no recent news as to if they will ever run again.

Motor Vehicles

The Black Country was home to some early manufacturers of motor cars and motor cycles, such as Sunbeam, Clyno, AJS and Star. The Museum is affiliated to the British Motorcycle Charitable Trust.

See also

• Beamish Museum - County Durham, England
• Summerlee Heritage Park - Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland
• Ulster Folk and Transport Museum - Cultra, Northern Ireland
• St Fagans National History Museum - Museum of Welsh Life, Cardiff, Wales.

External links

• Black Country Living Museum official website
• nb-President at BCLM

Additional photos

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  Station Road Cottages

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  Early Sunbeam motor car.

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  Vehicles on display in the exhibition area.

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  Tangye stationary engine on display in the exhibition area.

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  Glass engraver at work in a workshop in the village.

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  Early fire engine, probably made at the John Marston Co. Ltd. factory in Wolverhampton, which made Sunbeam cars and motor cycles.

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  In one of the cottages in the village, this kitchen fireplace shows cooking utensils, including a "Dutch Oven".

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  A trolleybus at the museum

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  1909-built Fellows Morton and Clayton steam narrowboat President, preserved in working order and based at the BCLM

Media related to Steam narrowboat President at Wikimedia Commons