The "Black Country" is the name given to the Industrial West Midlands of England. In this region the industrial revolution took place in the late eighteenth and nineteen centuries. The region was built on coal and iron and the myriad products of metal, ceramic, glass and wood manufactured by hundreds of thousands of men women and children. The place was dirty and dangerous and the workers were little more than slaves to their rich employers. It became one of the areas where trade unions were formed in the late 19th century to fight for the rights of the workers and is the place where I was born and although I headed south in the mid 1970s it still feels like home.
I have added a new page of images captured at the famous Black Country Living Museum. Over the past thirty years the museum trust has built a complete Black Country village by dismantling significant 18th to early 20th century buildings from around the region and reassembling them on the museum site. If you haven't been its worth a visit.