Historic England - The Black Country

[SCOOP115]

Interestingly two of West Bromwich's best known Collieries - Sandwell and Jubilee - both fall just outside the area shown above

[WOODLANDSWOLF]

Woodlands, as far as I can see there are no details regarding many of the pictures. But I did see something under "Featured photo' (it shows a picture of a man and a lady in a shop). It contains the photos and memories supplied by somebody called Ned Williams. This contains much detail about names, places, his memories and much else.

There is so much information it is difficult to tell just what is there.

I eventually found some photographs with attached details, in fact that was the case with most of them, however this particular set does not have any.

Lots of interesting stuff on the site though, spent two or three hours at it. Like to go on Google Earth and compare the present day locations to those shown in the photos.

Keeps me off the drink!

[Baggie Sharon]

What constitutes the Black Country is always a contentious matter! I hate driving through Sedgley into Wolverhampton and seeing the sign that says 'Wolverhampton - part of the BC'. To me it's not, although everyone has a different opinion. I'm from Gornal, do you know where your grandparents lived Albionic ?

[WBA1955]

The original name came about over where the famous ten yard seam of coal was mined. In places like Woodcross and Roseville it was near the surface and could be easily mined, sometimes by open cast.
In places like Baggeridge, Gornal, Pensnett and West Bromwich it was much deeper.
As well as coal, iron ore and fireclay was also mined and most of the pits were cheek by jowl with farm's and smallholdings, hence Black Country.
Later engineering towns adopted the name but that wasn't the original intention of the name.
Wolverhampton never claimed to be in it until it became fashionable.

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Whippet racing at the Tipton Sports Union, Gospel Oak, Tipton October 1973 - Courtesy of Q165

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I remember those Ocker Hill cooling towers being blown up in the background. The boom woke me up at around 7.30am 1985 when I lived in Wednesbury

[Albionic68]

......I'm from Gornal, do you know where your grandparents lived Albionic ?

Hello Sharon and sorry for the late reply. Nan was born and raised in Smethwick, somewhere near West Smethwick Park. Grandad and his brothers were originally from Gornal and moved to Smethwick where grandad met my nan and they raised their kids. I've no idea whether he was from Upper or Lower Gornal.

[WBA1955]

I remember those Ocker Hill cooling towers being blown up in the background. The boom woke me up at around 7.30am 1985 when I lived in Wednesbury

We were living on the Burberry Grange at the time. They put a letter through the door telling us that they were going to blow them up and not to be alarmed.
Now I usually go to see things like that but it was a Sunday morning and we'd only been married for a couple of years.😁

[Subwaywolf]

The original name came about over where the famous ten yard seam of coal was mined. In places like Woodcross and Roseville it was near the surface and could be easily mined, sometimes by open cast.
In places like Baggeridge, Gornal, Pensnett and West Bromwich it was much deeper.
As well as coal, iron ore and fireclay was also mined and most of the pits were cheek by jowl with farm's and smallholdings, hence Black Country.
Later engineering towns adopted the name but that wasn't the original intention of the name.
Wolverhampton never claimed to be in it until it became fashionable.

Sorry but this is full of inaccuracies.................where to start!

There is no evidence that the BC was ever named after the thick seam, this was something invented by those founders of the BCS in the 1960s. It suited there stance as most coal mines in Wolverhampton mined the thin seam and iron-ore, both which were critical for the development of the iron industry in the BC. Most of the thick seam was only suitable for household use, except in the district west of Dudley. I challenged the BCS about this definition and they have dropped it now as it has no foundation at all.

Coal mining has taken place for hundreds of years in the region, but it was only once the iron industry became established with its smoking furnaces and chimneys that killed any vegetation and blackened the atmosphere, that the name Black Country (BC) evolved around 1830-40.

Secondly, all those original sources (Gresley, Sidney, White, Burritt, Griffiths) geographically described the 'original BC' as comprising the Staffordshire section of our region only, with the Worcestershire section including Dudley only being incorporated 15-20 years later. These early sources all described the 'original BC' as incorporating 'Wolverhampton, Bilston, Wednesbury, Tipton, and northern West Bromwich'. Local sources confirmed the same, such as Reverend Isles, and the Earl of Dartmouth who owned mining land at West Bromwich - they determined that 10 of Wolverhampton's 14 parish areas lay truly in the BC, but not including those 4 parishes lying on its smaller, less-populated (back then) western side.

I spent 3 years studying newspaper archives (local and national) as well as those early 1800s books and all confirm the above. Contrary to the post above, Wolverhampton was widely considered to be the Capital or Metropolis of the BC, and Dudley did not consider itself to be so until the 1960s. Wolverhampton had first mooted the notion that it was only 'Of the BC but not in it' in 1937 as its western residential aspects evolved and with it newer engineering industries, but throughout the key section of the Industrial Revolution, Wolverhampton was a key BC town with 15000 metal workers and 3000 miners (I exclude Bilston from these figures for the sake of argument), and its average age of death was the 3rd lowest in the UK at just 19 years and 1 month. Between 400-600 miners died in Wolverhampton coal-mining incidents (again NOT Bilston) between 1830-1900.

The new pits at Jubilee, Sandwell Park, Hilton, Baggeridge, and Ashmore Park were not the typical shallow BC coal-mine, and hence did not really scar the surface in the same traditional way, hence writers like Phil Drabble exclude those areas from the original BC.

Wolverhampton was often the town most affected by the smog from the furnaces and chimneys due to its vast iron works, as viewed by some of those writers named, when viewing the region from Dudley Castle.

The BC was not named after nailers or chain-makers, tho in the 1900s these occupations have gained near-mythical status amongst BC historians because of their respective struggles and hardship. This 1900s perception of what defined the BC, with Dudley at its heart, is very different to the common view of the 'original BC'. Even 15 out of 17 1950-1980s writers acknowledge that Wolverhampton is a BC town.

Regards modern Wolverhampton, it is a confusing situation as its western suburbs like Tettenhall, Penn, Finchfield, Oxley, and Bushbury to the north were green field sites during the Industrial Revolution so strictly speaking cannot be considered BC and I doubt many people from those areas, certainly on the western side, associate themselves with it. The rest of the population are probably confused, depending on what they were told by their elders or what they were taught But only recently have those critical 1800s documents become easy to access, that tell us why the BC evolved and where the original BC lay. But this notion that Wolverhampton only wanted any BC legacy in recent times, is frankly laughable. Both Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, along with Walsall, lie on the edge of the BC. I certainly don't feel like I'm in the BC when I'm in West Bromwich, it feels very Birmingham-suburb to me, in fact until you go northward towards Wednesbury at Golds Hill, Carters Green, and Hill Top, which just like Monmore Green and Horsley Fields, were true BC areas.

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Courtesy of Q165

Princes End branch line looking towards Ocker Hill, September 1978