Black Country Museum: Iron, soot, and it's people.

By Taylor Sendek

  A view of the Black Country Museum.

              The Black Country Museum is a conglomeration of buildings from the time of the Industrial Revolution rebuilt into the confines of the Museum.
The museum represents what the people of industrial towns did, how they lived, and what they would do for fun, it also showed more clearly the emergence of the new and not yet real classification of the middle class. The museum contains, a steam engine used to pull water from the coal mines, shops that would have provided for the people living in the working towns, their houses, a fair ground and other forms of entertainment such as a cinema, forges for the iron works the town would have produced, and a trolly tram that would have enabled workers and women to go about their business. Black Country was known for its iron working especially. They specialized in structural iron work, chains, locks and keys, tube manufacturing, trap making and anchors. Black Country was one of the first areas to use the new technique of using coal to heat and temper iron instead of charcoal and was discovered by Thomas Dudley. This allowed stronger metal that could be used for more. Due to this Black Country can claim being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, even though the actual times of the Industrial revolution can be argued.

   One of the anchors that would have been produced in the anchor forge.

   A forge set up that would have been working continually filling the air with smoke and soot.

                The coal for the ironwork would have been brought up from the mines kept dry by steam engines, carried on the canals in boats and deposited at the forges for use by the blacksmiths and forge workers. The air of Black Country and other industrial towns would have been filled with smoke and soot, nearly blocking out the sun if not completely blocking it out. The workers would have also been covered in the soot that blanketed the city. Despite the dirty and cramped living conditions; for whole, large families lived in houses that were normally only two rooms, one up and one down, or if the family was better off four rooms two up and two down; there were things for the people to make life more "comfortable". Stores popped up that sold things, name brand things started to pop up around the time of the Industrial Revolution, to make life more convenient. Black Country also possessed a school for the children of the workers, though education was offered through the church, the idea that children should learn some basic reading and arithmetic was an idea that was starting to gain in popularity. They used a system where the older children would teach the younger ones so that they didn't need as educated teachers in the schools.

  The school.

             There were also new forms of transportation introduced that made commuting to factories easier for the men and going out to do shopping and outings safer for women. The trolly was one of those forms of transportation and they allowed more mobility for people of the era.

  Trollies like this would have carried people to and from where ever it was that they were going.

               Along with people going out to do more, things like traveling fairs started to come to the people to offer distractions for those who couldn't get away on the new fangled vacations and holidays that were becoming popular with the new trains, trams, and other safer forms of transport that allowed women as well as men to go out and see things.

  Fairs like this would have traveled around to offer distractions and entertainment to people.

                Towns like that represented in Black Country would become more popular as the Industrial Revolution boomed in Britain. Along with that boom of industry came a change in the way people saw themselves, others, and changed the things they were able to do, buy, and see. These changes catapulted us into the world we have come to know.