The Black Country

There is much debate about The Black Country, particularly the boundary and whether Wolverhampton is in or out. The currently recognised Black Country area encompasses the mining areas of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton in what was originally part of the Earl of Dudley’s Staffordshire coalfields. Originally however, the Black Country area was the middle plateau between the manufacturing towns of Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Wednesbury, Darlaston, Willenhall, Bilston, Coseley, Tipton, Dudley, Brierley Hill and the adjacent villages all sat over a shallow coal seam and this made it relatively easy to mine making the area the first to become heavily industrialised. This middle belt of industrial heartland was the start of the Industrial Revolution with Dud Dudley (1600–1684), one of the first Englishmen to smelt iron ore using coke. Dud’s father, Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley owned substantial estates around Dudley Castle including the manors of Dudley, Sedgley and Kingswinford. Sutton set up an early reverberatory furnace using coal which became the type used at Coalbrookdale and various other places by Abraham Darby in 1709. Darby was the Great Grandson of Dud Dudley’s sister. The Black Country area is at a higher altitude than many parts of England so there are no major rivers, historically used to transport the first goods. There are also no major Roman Roads. Whilst the Black Country wasn’t the very first area to build canals, due to the weight of coal, it wasn’t long before canals became the best and most profitable way of getting the raw materials of coal and iron to the manufacturing towns. One horse-drawn canal barge could carry about thirty tonnes at a time, faster than road transport and at half the cost. The earliest canals were improvements to existing river navigations until James Brindley & Thomas Telford made vast improvements with bridges and aqueducts in favour of expensive cuttings & tunnels. The canals caused a great change in the economy of Britain, it not only made it easier to transport materials between Wolverhampton, Walsall and Birmingham, it also opened up routes to the Potteries in Stoke and the mills of Manchester. The Staffordshire & Worcestershire canal opened in 1772 as did the Birmingham to Wolverhampton Old Main Line with a further link between the two in 1792 when the Dudley tunnel opened linking the 1779 Stourbridge Canal. The area became thick with black smoke from numerous chimneys with coal mines, coking, iron foundries, glass factories, brickworks and steel mills, producing a high level of air pollution. The name “Black Country” dates back to the 1840’s although it is not known whether the area became known as such due to the smoke pollution or the coal seam. In 1829 the Earl of Dudley created a 40 mile railway network around his coal fields in Pensnett linking them to Round Oak Steelworks in Brierley Hill and Ashwood canal marina on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. In 1852 the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway (which became part of Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1863) opened their route to Dudley further linking the Black Country to the rest of the UK. This Industrial Revolution almost certainly played it’s part in the downfall of Ruiton Windmill and others as it became much easier to transport goods around the country. Although the original Black Country was the mineral producing central belt between Wolverhampton, Walsall and Birmingham, the wider Black Country Area in the map above became a UNESCO Global Geopark on Friday 10 July 2020 in recognition of the international importance of its natural and cultural heritage.