Black Country Museum reflects life in an heavy industrial
area from the late 1700’s to the early 1900’s
and is absolutely fascinating. There is a starting point display
of all the famous people born in the Black Country –
all the types of industries that the area environments produced
and a huge display of real life in the working trams and trolley
buses – the village with the bakery which still bakes
bread for sale in their bygone days shop – a corner
fish and chip shop that sells it wares in a ‘poke’
– from the early 1930’s!!
There is a sweet shop that makes and sells boiled sugar sweets
in all flavours – the old fashioned flavours –
a pub – a chapel – a school with a teacher who
gives ‘leassons’ using a slate and slate pencil,
the fairground with a Helter Skelter with rope mats to slide
down on – a hobby horse roundabout and swing boats.
There was a roll a penny stall and a hoopla stall and to tantalise
the taste buds even toffee apples!!
On the site there was also a coal mining display with the
miners cottages and two cast iron houses which were an experiment
to see if houses could be ‘prefabricated’ quickly
– they could but proved too expensive so only these
two were built. To feed the inner man and give strength to
tackle everything there was to see there was a restaurant
serving traditional Black Country Dishes and they very nice
were too.
Electric tramcars and trolleybuses transport visitors from
the entrance in a recreated factory to the village area with
thirty buildings situated by the canal basin. Coal mine displays
include underground workings, colliery surface buildings and
a replica of the 1712 Newcomen steam engine. In all 42 separate
displays have either been re-erected or built to old plans
to create a living open air museum.
The Black Country Museum currently contains around 40,000
items in its various collections.
This is not your average dusty museum, it is literally a
living breathing town which makes you feel as though you have
stepped back in time.
It gives visitors an idea about how people in the black country
lived in the past. As you walk round you go into a house and
it is like going into someones home. There is someone there
baking or cleaning or just having a drink. As soon as you
step into the museum you step back in time.
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