The Black Country is a loosely defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of (but not inclusive of) Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton. During the industrial revolution in the 19th century this area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in the nation. The South Staffordshire coal mines, the coal coking operations, and the iron foundries and steel mills that used the local coal to fire their furnaces, produced a level of air pollution that had few equals anywhere in the world.
The Black Country is relatively recent as a concept and identity, the expression deriving from the 1840s.[1] It is popularly believed that the area got its name because of pollution from these heavy industries that covered the area in black soot. There is an anecdote (of dubious authenticity) about Queen Victoria ordering the blinds lowered on her carriage as the royal train passed through. However, historians suggest that it is more likely that the name existed even before the Industrial Revolution; outcroppings of black coal scarred the surface of the local heath, and the presence of coal so near the surface rendered the local soil very black.
The bounds of the Black Country, however, are controversial, and the whole of Wolverhampton is included by some and not at all by others. A common definition of the Black Country encompasses the three Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall.[2] The town of Dudley is sometimes referred to as being the Black Country's (unofficial) capital.[3]
An older, more precise, de facto definition uses geology and follows the outcroppings of the South Staffordshire "thick" coal seam known locally as the "thirty foot seam", as bounded by the eastern and western boundary faults and on the north by the Bentley fault which divides the South Staffordshire coalfield from the adjoining Cannock Chase coalfield. Near Halesowen and Stourbridge, the coal seams outcropped, providing a southern boundary. The outcropping coal made the soil black over large areas and gave rise to the local name. On this basis parts of Walsall, Wolverhampton and Stourbridge are not part of the Black Country but West Bromwich is, although here the thirty foot seam is at relative depth. These delineations are still of importance locally.
A useful guide for outsiders is to regard the M5 and M6 motorways as the eastern boundary but this, even using the 21st century definition, is only approximately correct as Smethwick is to the east of it and most of Walsall lies north east of the M6 motorway. The definition is simply wrong using the older geological definition.
The Black Country proper has coalesced into a single conurbation, but is unusual in that it has no single centre, having grown up from a number of historic market towns and industrial villages that have coalesced during the 20th century. It remains essentially polyfocal with many of the towns and villages remaining recognisable communities and in some cases resenting having been subsumed into a metropolitan borough whose centre is elsewhere.
The Black Country lies wholly within the West Midlands County, but was divided between the ancient counties of Staffordshire and Worcestershire. The ancient parish (and pre-1966 municipal borough) of Dudley was a detached part of Worcestershire within Staffordshire, whilst until 1845, much of the parish of Halesowen, including Oldbury and Warley Salop (but not Cradley or Warley Wigorn) was a detached part of Shropshire.
Since 1974, the Black Country has been administered by the four local authories of Dudley, Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Walsall, but had previously consisted of several smaller boroughs and urban districts. In 1966, Dudley took in most of Sedgley and Brierley Hill, while Coseley was split between Dudley and Wolverhampton, which in turn took in Tettenhall, Wednesfield and Bilston. West Bromwich annexed most of Tipton and Wednesbury, while parts of Tipton and Dudley were annexed into the new borough of Warley which mainly consisted of Oldbury, Smethwick and Rowley Regis. Dudley expanded further in 1974 to incorporate Halesowen and Stourbridge, while West Bromwich and Warley merged at this time to form Sandwell.
Walsall, on the other hand, took in the neighbouring towns of Darlaston and Willenhall in 1966, and expanded further in 1974 when Aldridge-Brownhills (a district generally not regarded as part of the Black Country) was incorporated into it.
The Black Country comprises parts of the towns of Bilston, Blackheath, Brierley Hill, Brownhills, Coseley, Cradley, Cradley Heath, Darlaston, Dudley, Gornal, Great Bridge, Halesowen, Kingswinford, Lye, Netherton, Oldbury, Old Hill, Toll End, Dudley Port, Quarry Bank, Rowley Regis, Sedgley, Smethwick, Stourbridge, Tipton, Wall Heath, Walsall, Warley, Wednesbury, Wednesfield, West Bromwich, Willenhall and Wordsley. and Bradley (Princes End Tipton)
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Industrialisation in the Black Country area goes back a long way. It was already an area where metal working was important as far back as the 16th century, due to the presence of iron ore and of coal in a seam 30 feet (9 m) thick, the thickest seam in Great Britain, which outcropped in various places. Many people had an agricultural smallholding and supplemented their income by working as nailers or smiths, an example of a phenomenon known to economic historians as proto-industrialisation.
In 1642 at the start of the Civil War, Charles I failed to capture the two arsenals of Portsmouth and Hull, which although in cities loyal to Parliament were located in counties loyal to him. As he had failed to capture the arsenals, Charles did not possess any supply of swords, pikes, guns, or shot; all these the Black Country could and did provide. From Stourbridge came shot, from Dudley cannon. The numberless small forges which then existed on every brook in the north of Worcestershire turned out successive supplies of sword blades and pike heads. It was said that among the many causes of anger Charles had against Birmingham was that one of the best sword makers of the day, a man named Robert Porter, who lived and made his blades in Worcestershire, but sold them in Birmingham, refused at any price to supply swords for "that man of blood" (A Puritan nickname for King Charles), or any of his adherents. As an offset to this sword maker, the Royalists had among their adherents Colonel Dud Dudley, who had invented a means of smelting iron by the use of coke, and who claimed he could turn out "all sorts of bar iron fit for making of muskets, carbines, and iron for great bolts", both more cheaply, more speedily and more excellent than could be done in any other way. His method was employed on the King's behalf.[4][5]
By the 19th century or early 20th century, many villages had their characteristic manufacture, but earlier occupations were less concentrated. Some of these concentrations are less ancient than sometimes supposed. For example, chain making in Cradley Heath seems only to have begun in about the 1820s, and the Lye holloware industry is even more recent.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, coal and limestone were worked only on a modest scale for local consumption, but during the Industrial Revolution by the opening of canals, such as the Birmingham Canal Navigations, Stourbridge Canal and the Dudley Canal (the Dudley Canal Line No 1 and the Dudley Tunnel) opened up the mineral wealth of the area to exploitation. Advances in the use of coke for the production in iron enabled iron production (hitherto limited by the supply of charcoal) to expand rapidly.
By Victorian times, the Black Country was one of the most heavily industrialised areas in Britain, and it became known for its pollution, particularly from iron and coal industries and their many associated smaller businesses. This led to the expansion of local railways and coal mine lines. The line running from Stourbridge to Walsall via Dudley Port and Wednesbury closed in the 1960s, but the Birmingham to Wolverhampton line via Tipton is still a major transport route.
The anchors and chains for the ill-fated liner RMS Titanic were manufactured in the Black Country in the area of Netherton. Three anchors and accompanying chains were manufactured; and the set weighed in at 100 tons. The centre anchor alone weighed 12 tons and was pulled through Netherton on its journey to the ship by 20 Shire horses.
The area soon gained notoriety. Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop, written in 1841, described how the area's local factory chimneys "Poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air". In 1862, Elihu Burritt, the American Consul in Birmingham, described the region as "black by day and red by night", because of the smoke and grime generated by the intense manufacturing activity and the glow from furnaces at night. Early 20th Century representations of the region can be found in the Mercian novels of Francis Brett Young, most notably My Brother Jonathan(1928).
It is said that J. R. R. Tolkien based the grim region of Mordor on the heavily industrialised Black Country area in his famed novel The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, in the Elvish Sindarin language, Mor-Dor means Dark (or Black) Land, and is sometimes even referred to within the novel as "The Black Country".
The 20th century saw a decline in coal mining in the Black Country, with the last colliery in the region - Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley - closing on 2 March 1968, marking the end of an era after some 300 years of mass coal mining in the region, though a small number of open cast mines remained in use for a few years afterwards.[6]
The heavy industry which once dominated the Black Country has now largely gone. The 20th century saw a decline in coalmining and the industry finally came to an end in 1968 with the closure of Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley. Clean air legislation has meant that the Black Country is no longer black. The area still maintains some manufacturing, but on a much smaller scale than historically. Chainmaking is still a viable industry in the Cradley Heath area where the majority of the chain for the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty fleet is made in modern factories.
Much but not all of the area now suffers from high unemployment and parts of it are amongst the most economically deprived communities in the UK. This is particularly true in parts of the boroughs of Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. According to the Government's 2007 Index of Deprivation (ID 2007), Sandwell is the third most deprived authority in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, and the 14th most deprived of the UK's 354 districts. Wolverhampton is the fourth most deprived district in the West Midlands, and the 28th most deprived nationally. Walsall is the fifth most deprived district in the West Midlands region, and the 45th most deprived in the country. Dudley fares better, but still has pockets of deprivation. Overall Dudley is the 100th most deprived district of the UK, but the second most affluent of the seven metropolitan districts of the West Midlands, with Solihull coming top.
As with many urban areas in the UK, there is also a significant ethnic minority population in parts: in Sandwell, 22.6 per cent of the population are from ethnic minorities, and in Wolverhampton the figure is 23.5 per cent. However, in Walsall 84.6 per cent of the population is described as white, while in Dudley 92 per cent of the population is white. Resistance to mass immigration in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s led to the slogan "Keep the Black Country white!".
The Black Country suffered its biggest economic blows in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when unemployment soared largely because of the closure of historic large factories including the Round Oak Steel Works at Brierley Hill and the Patent Shaft steel plant at Wednesbury. Unemployment rose drastically across the country during this period as part of prime minister Margaret Thatcher's battle against inflation as well as the modernisation process of Britain's industrial climate, but these areas were designated as Enterprise Zones and within a few years had been redeveloped. Round Oak and the surrounding farmland was developed as the Merry Hill Shopping Centre and Waterfront commercial and leisure complex, while the Patent Shaft site was developed as an industrial estate.
The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley recreates life in the Black Country in the early 20th century, and is a popular tourist attraction.
Evidence of this area beginning to grow once again can be found in the fact that a new Jaguar-Land Rover factory is set to be built near Wolverhampton.
The Black Country now has its own tartan, designed by Philip Tibbetts from Halesowen.[7][8]
In common with most parts of the UK, the extent to which the Black country accent and dialect are used varies from person to person and across the Black Country itself, with some elements of the dialect being stronger in some towns than others. Local dialect was, and probably still is to a lesser degree quite distinctive between the different towns and villages of the Black Country. Although most outsiders to the Black Country cannot tell this difference, Black Country folk can quite fiercely defend the difference between the accents.
Thus while a single example of Black Country dialect is hard to give, as different areas of the Black Country differ with colloquialisms, examples include "babby" for baby, "alf baerked" for stupid, "argy-bargy" for fight, and "bostin" to mean "very good".
The word endings with 'en' are still noticeable in conversation as in 'gooen' for going, callen for calling. The vowel 'a' is pronounced as 'o' as in 'sond' for sand, 'hond' for hand, 'opple' for apple, 'sponner' for spanner, and 'mon' for man. Other pronunciations are 'winder' for window, 'fer' for far, and 'loff' for laugh.[9]
The traditional Black Country dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English,[10] and can be very confusing for outsiders. Thee, Thy and Thou are still in use, as is the case in parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. "'Ow B'ist", meaning "How are you?" is a greeting contracted from "How be-est thou?", with the typical answering being "'Bay too bah", meaning "I am not too bad" contracted from "I be not too bad". "I haven't seen her" becomes "I ay sid 'er". Black Country dialect often uses "ar" where other parts of England use "yes" (this is common as far away as Yorkshire). Similarly, the local version of "you" is pronounced /ˈjaʊ/ yow, rhyming with "now". The local pronunciation "goo" (elsewhere "go") or "gooin'" is similar to that elsewhere in the Midlands. It is quite common for broad Black Country speakers to say agooin where others say going.
Despite the close proximity, many inhabitants of the Black Country resist hints at any relationship to people living in Birmingham, which may be called "Brum-a-jum" (Birmingham's colloquial name is Brummagem, a corruption of its older name of Bromwicham[11] – and hence West Bromwich) or Birminam (missing the g and h out and saying it the way it's spelt). Residents of Birmingham (Brummies) meanwhile often refer to their Black Country neighbours as "Yam Yams", a reference to the use of "Yow am" (or yow'm) instead of "You are".
The dialect's perception was boosted in 2008, due to an internet video, The Black Country Alphabet, which described the whole alphabet in Black Country speak.[12] Yet this in itself is quite misleading as a quality example of the dialect. For example, 'ow am ya?' is mainly used in the Wolverhampton area of the Black Country, which is only a small portion of the area, while 'ow bin ya?' is used by most.
A road sign containing local dialect was placed at the A461/A459/A4037 junction in 1997 before the construction of a traffic island on the site. The sign read, in translation, "If you're soft enough (stupid) to come down here on your way home, your tea (supper) will be spoilt."[13][14] This island was completed in 1998 and was the first phase of the Dudley Southern By-Pass which was opened on 15 October 1999.
The Black Country is home to three radio stations - Beacon Radio, Gold and 102.5 The 'Bridge, while the city of Wolverhampton has its own local station called 107.7 The Wolf. Both Beacon and Gold (formerly Radio WABC) have broadcast since 1976 from transmitter sites from Turner's Hill in neighbouring Rowley Regis, with the studios being located in Wolverhampton. 102.5 The 'Bridge has broadcast since 2008 and its studios are based in Stourbridge.
The Express and Star is one of the region's two daily newspapers, publishing eleven local editions from its Wolverhampton headquarters and its five district offices (for example the Dudley edition is considerably different in content from the Wolverhampton or Stafford editions). It is the biggest selling regional paper in the UK.[15] Incidentally the Express and Star, traditionally a Black Country paper has expanded to the point where they sell copies from vendors in Birmingham city centre.
The Black Country Mail - a local edition of the Birmingham Mail - is the region's other daily newspaper. Its regional base is in Walsall town centre. Established in 1973, from a site in High Street, Cradley Heath, the Black Country Bugle has also contributed to the regions past history. It started as a fortnightly publication, but due to its widespread appeal, now appears on a weekly basis.
Recently the 'Black Country Alphabet and Black Country Christmas Song' by the Black Country Tee-Shirts company have helped to demonstrate the accent and dialect further across the country.
In September 2009 a group of Black Country film-makers showcased a variety of video poems about the area and its cultural identity (Known collectively as "Black Country Cinema"). The films were exhibited at Wolverhampton's Light House Media Centre. Local film and digital media agency Screen West Midlands referred to the event as “Personal, Instinctual & Organic Video Poetry of everyday life.”[16] The event was a way of embracing the Black Country's distinctive cultural characteristics in the medium of film.
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