About Distinctly Black Country
a network for understanding yesterday's landscape today
Distinctly Black Country Description
The Distinctly Black Country network aims to link people who are interested in the way the past has created the modern Black Country landscape. We also aim to describe the distinguishing features of it, and to encourage contact with the things that make it special and different.
What is the Black Country?
The Black Country is a large urban area in the English West Midlands about 200 kilometres North West of London. Depending on which version of history you prefer, it takes its name either from the soil which was made dark by outcropping coal or from the thick pollution created by thousands of chimneys and hearths which sprang up during the area’s industrialisation.
Reviews
Despite becoming "a traditional English bodge", the visionary ideas of Otto Neurath made the Stowlawn area of Bilston unique in the history of housing in this country. Simon Jeffries suggests that Neurath's aim to provide happiness for slum dwellers of the Black Country means that even today, "it would be a fool or a snob who said Bilston isn’t a happy place."
For two centuries the industrial landscape of the Black Country has been a magnet for artists - first they came for its fiery grandeur, and then later for the industrial dereliction. As a new Black Country has emerged from the ashes, artists born and bred in the area have revealed the complex character of this changing landscape.
There are two chances next month to hear a great talk by Brendan Flynn on how the Black Country appears in art, first at Wolverhampton Archives and ...Local Studies and then Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/whats- on/15297/ http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/whats‚ Ķ/black-country-art/
Black Country Society; The Black Country Living Museum; Birmingham Canal Navigations Society
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In 1889 it was reported to the House of Commons that there used to be ‘a thousand nail shops in Womburn, a village near Wolverhampton, and there is not one left there now’.
In his free talk at Wolverhampton Archives next week, David Taylor explores the decline of the handmade nail-making industry in the second half of the 19th century and its effect on the people of Wombourne. http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/…/en d-of-an-industry-th…/
... Staffordshire; Wombourne Online
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Our Block Capital project gets a mention in this last of a series of blogs on the so-called "slums" of the nineteenth-century Black Country. From the Lye Waste of the 1700s to the rat-infested corridors of Smethwick tower blocks in the 1970s, via cholera in Bilston and the "unclean tenants" of Wednesbury, the idea of the slum was wide-ranging and very persistent.
This great picture is from a collection of shots of the West Smethwick Estate, the "Concrete Jungle" in the 1980s.
https://uptheossroad.wordpress.com/…/sl ums-of-the-black-co…/
A second showing starts next week of the Wolverhampton exhibition exploring millions of years of Black Country history... and in two free talks 'Doctor Fossil' takes us back in time to the area's geological origins
http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/…/th e-riches-ben-amazin…/ http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/…/a- black-country-time-…/ http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/…/bl ack-country-time-ma…/
... Wolverhampton Art Gallery; Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies; Bantock House Museum; Bilston Craft Gallery; Geology Matters; Black Country Society
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.. and if you want to hear more about the history of Wolverhampton Low Level Station, don't miss this free talk at Bantock House Museum http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/…/th e-story-of-wolverha…/
With the surviving canals being so much associated with the Black Country's character, they sometimes overshadow the the scale of the area's historic railway network. The Black Country has twice as many closed stations as open ones. Here's a few recorded on film:
Wolverhampton Low Level; Bilston West; Daisy Bank & Bradley; Princes End & Coseley; Tipton Five Ways; Dudley; Blowers Green; Round Oak; Brierley Hill; Brettel Lane;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WieB02DB5 Z4
Don't miss the Wolverhampton Local History Fair this Saturday Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies http://www.wolverhampton.gov.uk/…/Exper ts-on-hand-to-reveal… Birmingham Canal Navigations Society; Wolverhampton Civic and Historical Society; Wolverhampton Archaeology Group; Wolverhampton Art Gallery; Lost Wolverhampton;
MADE's new project - Chance Glass: Everybody's Story will explore the heritage of the remarkable, groundbreaking glassworks who, from their base in Smethwick, created products that had an impact across the globe http://made.org.uk/eve…/chance-glasswor ks-tell-us-your-story Smethwick Heritage Centre
The Black Country was home to many areas written off as "slums", but what did that really mean? A new post by Simon Briercliffe suggests that areas like The Mambles in Dudley were grim, but far from unique.
https://uptheossroad.wordpress.com/…/sl ums-of-the-black-co…/
We were deeply saddened by the passing of Chris Upton last Thursday.
Perhaps best known for his work on the history of Birmingham (including the fascinating ‘Living Back to Back’ in 2010) he was nonetheless a keen explorer of Black Country history, having been born and brought up in Wolverhampton (he wrote a key history of the city in 1998).
We were very pleased when he agreed to speak at the launch of distinctly black country in 2011 and he played a big part in making the e...vent a success. Chris was a friend of the project from then on and played significant roles in our Block Capital HLF project and Black Country Echoes Festival in 2014.
Extremely knowledgeable but always generous and self-effacing, he made a fantastic contribution to the popularisation of history in the region. His legacy is not just his writing and broadcast work but in the countless students and others he has inspired to take an interest in history.
He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.
Newman University; Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies; Walsall Local History Centre; Sandwell Community History and Archives Service; Dudley Archives; The Black Country Living Museum
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Don't miss the exhibition on Black Country geology at Bantock House Museum - now in it's last week.
https://www.facebook.com/…/a.9200550280 424…/920055141375781/
https://uptheossroad.wordpress.com/…/ob servatory-mansions-…/
Stourbridge; The only way is Dudley:
It'd be great to see these buildings saved
http://www.expressandstar.com/…/iconic- maltings-set-for-br…/
A date for your diary! Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies; Wolverhampton Civic and Historical Society
Just catching up - thanks to Rob Clayton for this link to a BBC video of his Lion Farm Estate photography http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-338 60668?SThisFB Municipal Dreams
A new award from Heritage Lottery Fund to explore the heritage of the Chance Brothers' Glassworks. http://made.org.uk/news/hlf-backs-made-gl assworks-project
Smethwick Heritage Centre
Another chance to hear Miles Glendinning speak in the Midlands
Hear more about a piece of lost Black Country landscape