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Where is the Black Country? You couldn't find it on
the map could you?. The Black Country is the West Midlands
region of industrial heartlands. Originally coal mining
and the working of iron the Black Country region covers
the areas of Dudley and Wolverhampton and stretches
round West Bromwich to Wednesbury and Walsall. The name
is derived from the mid 1900's when literally thousands
of furnaces and chimneys filled the air with smoke.
This was mining country. A smoking wasteland caused
by underground burning coal and derelict and depleted
coal faces.
The Industrial might of this region was known the
world over. The worlds first successful steam engine
for pumping water out of the mines was made in Dudley
by Thomas Newcomen. The Black Country region produced
vast quantities of metal goods. The American Consul
in Birmingham in 1868 wrote "The Black Country, black
by day and red by night, cannot be matched for vast
and varied production, by any other space of equal radius
on the surface of the globe". Furnaces and foundries
worked round the clock, the thundering of machinery
and the coal merchants fuelling the demand guaranteed
that the Black Country played a prominent role in the
Industrial Revolution. It was not without it's toll
in human life. A visit to the Black
Country Living Museum demonstrates what life was
like in these times, so hard for us to imagine today.
Today, the Black Country benefits from traditional
industries as well as more modern newcomers and is a
growing tourist attraction in its own right.
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