113-626: The Black Country is an area of England's West Midlands . It is mainly urban, covering most of the Dudley and Sandwell metropolitan boroughs , with the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton sometimes included. The towns of Dudley and Tipton are generally considered to be the centre. The 14-mile (23 km) road between Wolverhampton and Birmingham was described as "one continuous town" in 1785. The area
226-686: A 100-foot deep crater, and is the UK's largest explosion, being caused by around 4,000 tonnes of high explosive , and may be the world's largest non-nuclear explosion . Birmingham was the third most bombed city in the UK after London and Liverpool ; Spitfires were built in Castle Bromwich, Lancasters at Austin's works in Longbridge at Cofton Hackett , and the Birmingham Small Arms Company at Small Heath produced
339-405: A few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin horses walk their doleful round. From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted roofless cottages of dingiest brick, half swallowed up in sinking pits or inclining to every point of the compass, while the timbers point up like
452-848: A league". An alternative theory for the meaning of the name is proposed as having been caused by the darkening of the local soil due to the outcropping coal and the seam near the surface. It was however the American diplomat and travel writer Elihu Burritt who brought the term "the Black Country" into widespread common usage with the third, longest and most important of the travel books he wrote about Britain for American readers, his 1868 work Walks in The Black Country and its Green Borderland . Burritt had been appointed United States consul in Birmingham by Abraham Lincoln in 1864,
565-592: A material suitable for making the pots in which glass was melted. 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. Numerous small forges which then existed on every brook in
678-722: A minority of those in power espousing racial equality ; European media and leaders lamented loss of Empire , advocated ultranationalism and prized military physical advantage; Galton saw human eugenics as part of all means to do better . Much of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom began in Birmingham and the Black Country area of West Midlands. The Industrial Revolution is thought to have begun when Abraham Darby substituted coke in
791-405: A perpetual twilight reigns during the day, and during the night fires on all sides light up the dark landscape with a fiery glow. The pleasant green of pastures is almost unknown, the streams, in which no fishes swim, are black and unwholesome; the natural dead flat is often broken by high hills of cinders and spoil from the mines; the few trees are stunted and blasted; no birds are to be seen, except
904-483: A role that required him to report regularly on "facts bearing upon the productive capacities, industrial character and natural resources of communities embraced in their Consulate Districts" and as a result travelled widely from his home in Harborne , largely on foot, to explore the local area. Burritt's association with Birmingham dated back 20 years and he was highly sympathetic to the industrial and political culture of
1017-558: A site at Cooper's Bank , south of Gornalwood . Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewsbury was the first iron-framed building in the world in 1797. Thomas Bolton & Sons of Froghall , Staffordshire, made the world's first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1857, having supplied a submarine cable across the English Channel in 1850. On 10 July 1890, a trunk circuit telephone line was opened between London and Birmingham by
1130-576: A toast given by a Mr Simpson, town clerk to Lichfield , addressing a Reformer's meeting on 24 November 1841, published in the Staffordshire Advertiser . He describes going into the "black country" of Staffordshire – Wolverhampton, Bilston and Tipton. In published literature, the first reference dates from 1846 and occurs in the novel Colton Green: A Tale of the Black Country by the Reverend William Gresley , who
1243-461: A unitary authority in 2009) were Bromsgrove, South Staffordshire, Warwick, Wychavon, and Lichfield. At county level, the least deprived areas, in descending order, were Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Solihull, Staffordshire, and Shropshire. In March 2011 the region had the second highest overall unemployment claimant count in England at 4.7%, second to North East England . The highest in the region
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#17327652622481356-612: A whole as measured by the 2011 census was as follows: For top-tier authorities in the West Midlands, Stoke-on-Trent has the highest teenage pregnancy rate. For council districts, Nuneaton and Bedworth in Warwickshire has the highest rate closely followed by Tamworth . For top-tier authorities, Shropshire has the lowest rate, and for council districts Malvern Hills has the lowest rate. The region, from studies of multiple deprivation, shows similarities with Yorkshire and
1469-714: A wider area than its common modern usage, however, devoting the first third of the book to Birmingham, which he described as "the capital, manufacturing centre, and growth of the Black Country", and writing "plant, in imagination, one foot of your compass at the Town Hall in Birmingham, and with the other sweep a circle of twenty miles [30 km] radius, and you will have, 'the Black Country" (this area includes Coventry , Kidderminster and Lichfield ). A few Black Country places such as Wolverhampton, Bilston and Wednesfield are mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters and chronicles and
1582-466: Is Warwickshire (its population is between 550,000 and 600,000 people). The other counties and metropolitan boroughs have none, their public education systems are comprehensive in intake. The grammar and independent schools tend to produce pass-rate examination results among the top twenty ranked regionally. Many pupils compete for entrance examinations to attend such long-established Grammar Schools and most have significant parent sponsorship. In 2016 two of
1695-745: Is about twenty miles in length and five in bredth reaching from north to south". The phrase was used again, though as a description rather than a proper noun , by the Illustrated London News in an 1849 article on the opening of the South Staffordshire Railway . An 1851 guidebook to the London and North Western Railway included an entire chapter entitled "The Black Country", including an early description: In this Black Country, including West Bromwich, Dudley, Darlaston, Bilston, Wolverhampton and several minor villages,
1808-576: Is also the largest kind of boat race in the United Kingdom . The official representative body of the region is the West Midlands Leaders Board which has limited administrative functions such as regional planning and economic development. The board is not an elected body, but is made up of members appointed from local councils across the region and is known as a quango . It is based on Edward Street in Birmingham, near
1921-632: Is geographically diverse, from the urban central areas of the West Midlands conurbation to the rural counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire which border Wales . The region is landlocked; however, the longest river in the UK, the River Severn , traverses the region south-eastwards, flowing through the county towns of Shrewsbury and Worcester, and the Ironbridge Gorge , a UNESCO World Heritage Site . Staffordshire
2034-594: Is home to the industrialised Potteries conurbation, including the city of Stoke-on-Trent and the Staffordshire Moorlands area, which borders the south-eastern Peak District National Park near Leek . The region also encompasses five Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty : the Wye Valley , Shropshire Hills , Cannock Chase , Malvern Hills and parts of the Cotswolds . Warwickshire is home to
2147-755: Is in Brierley Hill , near the headquarters of West Midlands Police , where the Child Support Agency (CSA) was headquartered. The region's Manufacturing Advisory Service was on Wolverhampton Science Park , north of the city centre; this function is now represented by Made in the Midlands , north of Wolverhampton. The DIT West Midlands for the region is based at the West Midlands Chambers of Commerce on Harborne Road , south of NHS West Midlands west of Five Ways. Most of
2260-548: Is now North Somerset . High Duty Alloys at Redditch constructed (forged) the compressor and turbine blades for Whittle's first engines, and many of the early jet engines; it made Concorde 's airframe from the Hiduminium R.R.58 aluminium alloy . Maxaret , the world's first ABS braking system, was invented in Coventry by Dunlop in the early 1950s for aircraft; John Boyd Dunlop was a Scottish vet who had first produced
2373-402: Is the earliest documented working steam engine. An important milestone in the establishment of Black Country industry came when John Wilkinson set up an iron works at Bradley near Bilston. In 1757 he started making iron there by coke-smelting rather than using charcoal. His example was followed by others and iron making spread rapidly across the Black Country. Another important development of
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#17327652622482486-403: 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
2599-538: Is the oldest working engine in the world. Smethwick was a main centre for making lighthouse lanterns . Valor Fires in Erdington developed the first radiant gas fire in 1967, a balanced flue fire in 1973, and a natural flame gas fire in 1978. The Erdington site, owned by Iceland's BDR Thermea , closed in May 2012. The company also built gas cookers ; since 2011 the company has been part of Glen Dimplex , who have
2712-610: The Bentley Fault , to the north of which lies the Cannock Chase Coalfield . Around the exposed coalfield, separated by geological faults, lies a concealed coalfield where the coal lies at much greater depth. A mine was sunk between 1870 and 1874 over the eastern boundary of the then known coal field in Smethwick and coal was discovered at a depth of over 400 yards. In the last decade of the 19th century, coal
2825-529: The M1919 Browning machine gun . Boulton Paul Aircraft had their main aircraft factory in the north of Wolverhampton. RAF Defford , in the south of Worcestershire between Pershore and Croome Park , was where many important airborne radars were developed, such as H2S (radar) and anti-submarine radars. Thomas Wedgwood , son of Josiah Wedgwood, discovered the first photo-sensitive (light-sensitive) chemicals – silver nitrate and silver chloride in
2938-731: The Merry Hill Shopping Centre and Waterfront commercial and leisure complex, while the Patent Shaft site was developed as an industrial estate. Unemployment in Brierley Hill peaked at more than 25% – around double the national average at the time – during the first half of the 1980s following the closure of Round Oak Steel Works, giving it one of the worst unemployment rates of any town in Britain. The Merry Hill development between 1985 and 1990 managed to reduce
3051-555: The National Indoor Arena . From March 2010, the funding decisions at regional level were taken over by Advantage West Midlands , the Regional Development Agency . The West Midlands is the second most ethnically diverse region of the UK (London being the most diverse). This is in large part due to the West Midlands conurbation , which is highly diverse. The ethnic makeup of the West Midlands as
3164-567: The National Telephone Company ; for the first time this allowed phone calls between the London and the north. The world's first coaxial cable was laid between London and Birmingham in 1936 to give 40 channels for telephone traffic. and brought into use in 1938, later extended to Manchester in 1940. Alexander Parkes invented the first man-made plastic ( thermoplastic ) in Birmingham in 1856. Princess Square, Wolverhampton,
3277-462: The Patent Shaft steel plant at Wednesbury. Unemployment rose drastically across the country during this period as a result of Conservative Prime Minister Thatcher's economic policies; later, in an implicit acknowledgement of the social problems this had caused, these areas were designated as Enterprise Zones, and some redevelopment occurred. Round Oak and the surrounding farmland was developed as
3390-485: The Perrott's Folly . Philip Larkin came from Coventry. Rowland Hill (stamps) was from Kidderminster. The writer George Eliot came from Nuneaton . Anthony E. Pratt from Birmingham invented Cluedo . Frederick Gibberd of Coventry designed Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral . Edward Cave from Rugby made Britain's first magazine in 1731 – The Gentleman's Magazine . Philip Astley from Newcastle-under-Lyme invented
3503-633: The Peugeot 206 , closed at the end of 2006, with production moving to Trnava in Slovakia, and some to a plant at Kolín in the Czech Republic . Alfred Herbert of Coventry was the largest machine-tool manufacturer in the UK for many decades; it was brought down in the 1970s by advancing technology overseas, and complacent strategic decisions of the management, finally closing in 1982; many Midlands manufacturing companies followed similar fates in
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3616-460: The Thick Coal , Heathen Coal , Stinking Coal , Bottom Coal and Singing Coal seams. Other seams also exist. The Thick Coal seam was also known as the "Thirty Foot" or "Ten Yard" seam and is made up of a number of beds that have come together to form one thick seam. Interspersed with the coal seams are deposits of iron ore and fireclay . The Black Country coal field is bounded on the north by
3729-569: The 1790s. Sir Norman Lockyer of Rugby discovered helium in 1868, for which he used electromagnetic spectroscopy . Edward Weston of Oswestry, who emigrated to the US, built the first accurate voltmeter in the late 1880s, and the Weston cell in 1893. Francis W. Aston of Harborne, educated at the University of Birmingham, developed mass spectrometry in 1919, which helped him to identify
3842-816: 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
3955-606: The 18th century was the construction of canals to link the Black Country mines industries to the rest of the country. Between 1768 and 1772 a canal was constructed by James Brindley starting in Birmingham through the heart of the Black Country and eventually leading to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. In the middle of the 18th century, Bilston became well known for the craft of enamelling . Items produced included decorative containers such as patch-boxes, snuff boxes and bonbonnieres . The iron industry grew during
4068-442: The 1970s and 1980s. Henry Wiggin & Co of Hereford developed the metal alloys necessary for other Midlands' (and beyond) automotive and aerospace companies – Inconel , Incoloy and Nimonic . It was the lack of vanadium for high-melting point alloys , caused by Royal Navy action, that prevented German Me 262 engines being serviceable; had German Second World War engineers had a greater supply of vanadium and molybdenum ,
4181-593: The 19th century to the 1960s, with much housing built for the miners. Today the area is still referred to as Hamstead Village. The River Tame enters Hamstead after passing through Sandwell Valley , and runs through the village before exiting into Perry Hall Park . It is the largest tributary of the River Trent but is not navigable. After heavy rains it can overspill its banks, flooding the village. As of 2020 , flood alleviation works are being undertaken at Sandwell Valley , to protect Hamstead. Two brick bridges over
4294-653: The 19th century, peaking around 1850–1860. In 1863, there were 200 blast furnaces in the Black Country, of which 110 were in blast. Two years later it was recorded that there were 2,116 puddling furnaces, which converted pig-iron into wrought iron , in the Black Country. In 1864 the first Black Country plant capable of producing mild steel by the Bessemer process was constructed at the Old Park Works in Wednesbury . In 1882, another Bessemer-style steel works
4407-410: The 300th anniversary of the erection of the first Newcomen atmospheric engine . Following this it was agreed by the museum and Black Country society for 14 July to be recognised as Black Country Day to celebrate the area's role in the Industrial Revolution. The day was marked by Department for Communities and Local Government in 2013 and following calls to do more in 2014 more events were planned around
4520-469: The BBC election exit poll . 6 ft 9 Daniel Kawczynski , a Shropshire MP, is the tallest MP ever. Although having a slightly smaller percentage of the vote than the neighbouring East Midlands , the geographic area of the West Midlands is more Conservative, due to Labour's vote now consigned to the urban areas of Birmingham, Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent. The number of seats is more favoured towards Labour than
4633-442: The Black Country can be defined by using the special cultural and industrial characteristics of the area. Areas around the canals (the cut) which had mines extracting mineral resources and heavy industry refining these are included in this definition. Cultural parameters include unique or characteristic foods such as groaty pudding , grey peas and bacon, faggots , gammon or pork hocks and pork scratchings ; Black Country humour; and
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4746-565: The Black Country changed from one of the most prosperous industrial working-class regions in the country, to one of the most deprived. As the heavy industry that had named the region faded away, in the 1970s a museum, called the Black Country Living Museum started to take shape on derelict land near to Dudley. Today this museum demonstrates Black Country crafts and industry from days gone by and includes many original buildings which have been transported and reconstructed at
4859-442: The Black Country dialect. The Black Country Society defines the Black Country's borders as the area on the thirty foot coal seam, regardless the depth of the seam. This definition includes West Bromwich and Oldbury, which had many deep pits, and Smethwick. The thick coal that underlies Smethwick was not mined until the 1870s and Smethwick has retained more Victorian character than most West Midland areas. Sandwell Park Colliery's pit
4972-667: The Black Country form part of the Birmingham metropolitan economy , the second largest in the UK. In 2011, the government announced the creation of the Black Country Enterprise Zone. The zone includes 5 sites in Wolverhampton and 14 in Darlaston . The i54 business park in Wolverhampton is the largest of the 19 sites; its tenants include Jaguar Land Rover . The largest site in Darlaston is that of
5085-578: 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
5198-802: The Ecology Party and then the Green Party in 1985. In the ONS International Territorial Levels (ITL), the West Midlands form a level-1 ITL region, coded "UKG", which is subdivided as follows: The region consists of the following administrative subdivisions: Key: †two-tier non-metropolitan county | * metropolitan county including the West Midlands Combined Authority and mayor The West Midlands' population accounts for almost 11% of England's overall population. 49.36% of
5311-748: The Humber , and is more deprived than the neighbouring East Midlands. From the Indices of deprivation 2007 , it can be seen that, in common with Northern England , the region has more Lower Area Super Output Areas in the 20% most deprived districts than in the 20% least deprived districts. The region's most deprived council districts, in descending order, are Birmingham (10th highest in England), Sandwell (14th), Stoke-on-Trent (16th), Wolverhampton (28th), Walsall (45th), Coventry (61st), and Dudley (100th). The least deprived districts in 2007 (before Shropshire became
5424-479: The Iron Trade of Great Britain , stated "The Black Country commences at Wolverhampton, extends a distance of sixteen miles to Stourbridge, eight miles to West Bromwich, penetrating the northern districts through Willenhall to Bentley, The Birchills, Walsall and Darlaston, Wednesbury, Smethwick and Dudley Port, West Bromwich and Hill Top, Brockmoor, Wordsley and Stourbridge. As the atmosphere becomes purer, we get to
5537-603: The Midlands Employers' Federation, a body founded by Dudley Docker , the Asquith Government's armaments programme was jeopardised, especially its procurement of naval equipment and other industrial essentials such as steel tubing, nuts and bolts, destroyer parts, etc. This was of national significance at a time when Britain and Germany were engaged in the Anglo-German naval arms race that preceded
5650-550: The Old Patent tube works of John Russell & Co. Ltd., and within weeks upwards of 40,000 workers across the Black Country had joined the dispute. Notable figures in the labour movement, including a key proponent of Syndicalism , Tom Mann , visited the area to support the workers and Jack Beard and Julia Varley of the Workers' Union were active in organising the strike. During this confrontation with employers represented by
5763-574: The Royalists had among their adherents Dud Dudley, now a Colonel in the Royalist army, who had experience in iron making, 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. In 1712, a Newcomen Engine was constructed near Dudley and used to pump water from coal mines belonging to Lord Dudley. This
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#17327652622485876-466: The Tame in Hamstead are Grade II listed . St Paul's Church, Hamstead was consecrated in 1892. Its grounds include Hamstead War Memorial, commemorating local men who died in World War I . Both church and memorial are Grade II listed. There is also a secondary School, Hamstead Hall Academy . The Tame Valley Canal runs through Hamstead Village near to the old colliery site. Coal used to be transported from Hamstead Wharf near Spouthouse Lane along
5989-458: The UK's car industry would be centred in Coventry and Birmingham; most of this has now gone. Midland Motor Cylinder (part of Birmid Industries ) of Smethwick was the largest producer of automobile cylinder blocks in Europe. Fort Dunlop was Europe's largest tyre plant. Metro-Cammell in Birmingham made most of the 1970s and 1980s London Underground trains. MG Rover (a company of Rover) closed in 2005 (from 1885), The Ryton plant , which made
6102-430: The West Midlands, with Solihull coming top. It also benefits from tourism due to the popularity of the Black Country Living Museum , Dudley Zoo and Dudley Castle . 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 is from ethnic minorities, and in Wolverhampton the figure is 23.5 per cent. However, in Walsall 84.6 per cent of
6215-429: The accounts of the building of Henry VIII's Nonsuch Palace record that nails were supplied by Reynolde Warde of Dudley at a cost of 11s 4d per thousand. By the 1620s "Within ten miles [16 km] of Dudley Castle there were 20,000 smiths of all sorts". In the early 17th century, Dud Dudley , a natural son of the Baron of Dudley, experimented with making iron using coal rather than charcoal. Two patents were granted for
6328-446: The anthem was raised in 2013 by James Stevens and Steven Edwards who wanted the region to have an official anthem to accompany the Black Country flag & Black Country Day. The heavy industry which once dominated the Black Country has now largely gone. The 20th century saw a decline in coal mining and the industry finally came to an end in 1968 with the closure of Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley . Clean air legislation has meant that
6441-428: The area to exploitation. Advances in the use of coke for the production of 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. Industrialisation led to
6554-571: The area's workforce had effectively eschewed trade unionism. 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. Other industries thrived, however. Manufacturers like Rubery Owen , Chance Bros , Wilkins and Mitchell , GKN , John Thompson (company) and many more prospered from
6667-584: The border with Powys , Wales. The region contains five Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), including the Shropshire Hills , Malvern Hills and Cannock Chase , and parts of the Wye Valley and Cotswolds . The Peak District national park also stretches into the northern corner of Staffordshire . Major towns and cities in the West Midlands region include: The West Midlands region contains several urban areas with populations of 100,000 or more in 2021, which include: The RAF Fauld explosion on 27 November 1944 in east Staffordshire produced
6780-431: The canal to the Grand Union Canal and onwards. The area is served by Hamstead railway station on the Birmingham-Walsall Line , part of the former Grand Junction Railway , opened in 1837. Trains run half-hourly in both directions, from 0530 until 0000 seven days a week. Trains are Operated by West Midlands Trains . The area of Hamstead which is a part of Old Walsall Road is commonly referred to as Hamstead Village by
6893-515: The coal seam comes to the surface – so West Bromwich , Coseley , Oldbury , Blackheath , Cradley Heath , Old Hill , Bilston , Dudley , Tipton , Wednesbury , and parts of Halesowen , Walsall and Smethwick or what used to be known as Warley ." There are records from the 18th century of shallow coal mines in Wolverhampton, however. Others have included areas slightly outside the coal field which were associated with heavy industry . Bilston-born Samuel Griffiths, in his 1876 Griffiths Guide to
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#17327652622487006-413: The coal seam is shallow, making the soil black at the surface. Some coal mining areas to the east and west of the geologically defined Black Country are therefore excluded by this definition because the coal here is too deep down and does not outcrop. The seam outcrop definition excludes areas in North Worcestershire and South Staffordshire. The first recorded use of the term "the Black Country" may be from
7119-429: The coalfield rather than the thick seam, running from Wolverhampton to Bloxwich, to West Bromwich, to Stourbridge and back to Wolverhampton again. A travelogue published in 1860 made the connection more explicit, calling the name "eminently descriptive, for blackness everywhere prevails; the ground is black, the atmosphere is black, and the underground is honeycombed by mining galleries stretching in utter blackness for many
7232-475: The coat-of-arms of the County Borough of Dudley. At a number of places, notably the Rowley Hills and at Barrow Hill , a hard igneous rock is found. The rock, known as dolerite, used to be quarried and used for road construction. In recent years the Black Country has seen the adoption of symbols and emblems with which to represent itself. The first of these to be registered was the Black Country tartan in 2009, designed by Philip Tibbetts from Halesowen. In 2008
7345-492: The engine life (around 12 hours maximum, from entering service in April 1944 to the end of the war) of their jet engine would have increased much more, which would have been significant to the war's outcome. Bristol Siddeley developed the rocket engines for Black Arrow at Ansty; in fact all of R-R's rocket engines were developed and built there at R-R's Industrial and Marine Gas Turbine Division; Britain's smaller rocket engines for missiles were built by Bristol Aerojet in what
7458-411: The establishment of this device was associated with Richard Foley , son of a Dudley nailer, who built a slitting mill near Kinver in 1628. The slitting mill made it much simpler to produce nail rods from iron bar. Another development of the early 17th century was the introduction of glass making to the Stourbridge area. One attraction of the region for glass makers was the local deposits of fireclay ,
7571-416: 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 made in the Black Country at Netherton . Three anchors and accompanying chains were manufactured; and
7684-417: The first isotopes , receiving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922. Dennis Gabor invented holography at British Thomson-Houston in Rugby in 1947, receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1971. James Glaisher in 1862 took a record balloon flight with Henry Tracey Coxwell for the BAAS near Wolverhampton. They reached 29,000 feet (8,800 m) the composition of the Earth's atmosphere until then
7797-433: The first pneumatic tyres in 1889. Matthew Piers Watt Boulton , grandson of Matthew Boulton, and born in the area, invented the aileron , an important flight control surface in 1868, decades before the first actual flight. Triumph Engineering was a famous motorbike firm in Meriden. About a quarter of all British WWI planes were built in Coventry. The Jensen Interceptor FF was the first production four-wheel-drive car in
7910-407: The first to explicitly distinguish the area from nearby Birmingham , noting that "On certain rare holidays these people wash their faces, clothe themselves in decent garments, and, since the opening of the South Staffordshire Railway, take advantage of cheap excursion trains, go down to Birmingham to amuse themselves and make purchases." The geologist Joseph Jukes made it clear in 1858 that he felt
8023-417: The forerunners of a number of Black Country towns and villages such as Cradley, Dudley, Smethwick, and Halesowen are included in the Domesday Book of 1086. At this early date, the area was mostly rural. A monastery was founded in Wolverhampton in the Anglo-Saxon period and a castle and priory was built at Dudley during the period of Norman rule. Another religious house, Premonstratensian Abbey of Halesowen ,
8136-663: The former IMI James Bridge Copper Works. West Midlands (region) The West Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of International Territorial Level for statistical purposes. It covers the western half of the area known traditionally as the Midlands . The region consists of the counties of Herefordshire , Shropshire , Staffordshire , Warwickshire , West Midlands and Worcestershire . The region has seven cities: Birmingham , Coventry , Hereford , Lichfield , Stoke-on-Trent , Wolverhampton and Worcester . The West Midlands region
8249-647: The geographic spread, with 35 Conservative seats and 24 Labour. All of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire is now Conservative. The Green Party of England and Wales was formed at the Bridge Inn in Napton-on-the-Hill , Warwickshire, in February 1973, originating from an article by Paul R. Ehrlich about population growth in Playboy magazine. In 1975, it became
8362-404: The higher ground of Brierley Hill, nevertheless here also, as far as the eye can reach, on all sides, tall chimneys vomit forth great clouds of smoke". Today the term commonly refers to the majority of the four metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton although it is said that "no two Black Country men or women will agree on where it starts or ends". Official use of
8475-666: The idea of a flag for the region was first raised. After four years of campaigning a competition was successfully organised with the Black Country Living Museum . This resulted in the adoption of the Flag of the Black Country as designed by Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School in Stourbridge and was registered with the Flag Institute in July 2012. The flag was unveiled at the museum on 14 July 2012 as part of celebration in honour of
8588-520: The local area's unemployment dramatically, however. The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley recreates life in the Black Country in the early 20th century, and is a popular tourist attraction . On 17 February 2012 the museum's collection in its entirety was awarded Designation by Arts Council England (ACE). Designation is a mark of distinction that celebrates unique collections of national and international importance. The four metropolitan boroughs of
8701-454: The locals. Hamstead Village contains a variety of shops and business which run in the area, such as supermarkets and hairdressers. A Lidl shop used to be located at Hamstead Village, but has since been moved further down Old Walsall Road where a former GKN factory used to be located at, and is now revamped and much larger than the previous Lidl building, being 1,410sqm, alongside 141 parking spaces. This West Midlands location article
8814-408: The meaning of the term was self-explanatory to contemporary visitors, remarking that "It is commonly known in the neighbourhood as the 'Black Country', an epithet the appropriateness of which must be acknowledged by anyone who even passes through it on a railway". Jukes based his Black Country on the seat of the great iron manufacture, which for him was geographically determined by the ironstone tract of
8927-542: The modern day circus in 1768 – Astley's Amphitheatre . The Castlemorton Common Festival in May 1992 near Malvern, led to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 . The Nowka Bais is a Bengali boat racing festival which takes place annually in Birmingham . It is a cultural event in the West Midlands, United Kingdom attracting not only the Bangladeshi diaspora but a variety of cultures. It
9040-465: The most economically deprived communities in the UK. This is particularly true in parts of the metropolitan 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
9153-696: The name came in 1987 with the Black Country Development Corporation , an urban development corporation covering the metropolitan boroughs of Sandwell and Walsall, which was disbanded in 1998. The Black Country Consortium (founded in 1999) and the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (founded in 2011) both define the Black Country as the four metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, an approximate area of 138 square miles (360 km). The borders of
9266-496: The name is also used for the much smaller West Midlands county and conurbation which is in the central belt of the Midlands and on the eastern side of the West Midlands Region. It is also still used by various organisations within that area, such as West Midlands Police and West Midlands Fire Service . The highest point in the region is Black Mountain , at 703 metres (2,307 ft) in west Herefordshire on
9379-534: 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, Robert Porter , who manufactured swords in Digbeth , 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-cutler and men like him in Birmingham,
9492-541: The number of seats, with 42% of the region's electorate voting Conservative, 33% Labour, 16% UKIP, 6% Liberal Democrat and 3% Green. The Conservatives gained 2 seats with virtually no swing from Labour to Conservative. In the 2017 general election , South Staffordshire ( Gavin Williamson ) had the second-highest Conservative vote proportion in the UK – 69.8%. David Firth , at the University of Warwick , invented
9605-427: The onset of frozen food in the UK. Alfred Bird invented egg-free custard in 1837 in Birmingham – accidentally given to guests at his home, being created as his wife had an allergy to eggs; he then invented baking powder in 1843 as his wife also had an allergy to yeast . J. R. R. Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, Kings Heath, then part of Worcestershire, and was inspired by Moseley Bog and Sarehole , and perhaps by
9718-658: The outbreak of the First World War . Following a ballot of the union membership, a settlement of the dispute was reached on 11 July after arbitration by government officials from the Board of Trade led by the Chief Industrial Commissioner Sir George Askwith, 1st Baron Askwith . One of the important consequences of the strike was the growth of organised labour across the Black Country, which was notable because until this point
9831-792: The place of charcoal to smelt iron, at his Old Furnace. The Black Country may be regarded as the world's first industrial landscape, while nearby Ironbridge Gorge claims to be the Birthplace of Industry. The world's first cast iron bridge in 1779 spans the Gorge. The first self-propelled locomotive to run on rails in 1803 at Coalbrookdale, was built by Richard Trevithick . The first iron rails for horse-drawn transport, were made at Coalbrookdale in 1768 by Richard Reynolds at Ketley Ironworks . Iron rails only became widely successful in 1820 when made out of wrought iron at Bedlington Ironworks in north-east England. Birmingham's industrial development
9944-515: 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
10057-573: The post-war boom in Britain, with the West Midlands motor industry being a key driver of the economy. Wages rose faster than the national average, and unemployment remained low into the late 1970s. It was only in the late 1970s and 1980s, as global shocks and political change affected British industry, that the region began to become deindustrialised, with the years 1979-1982 witnessing the closure of large employers such as Bilston Steel Works , Round Oak, Patent Shaft Steelworks, Rubery Owen, Birmid Industries and others in quick succession. The population of
10170-512: The presence of iron ore and coal in a seam 30 feet (9 m) thick, the thickest seam in Great Britain, which outcropped in various places. The first recorded blast furnace in the Black Country was built at West Bromwich in the early 1560s. 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 1583,
10283-410: The process: one in 1621 to Lord Dudley and one in 1638 to Dud Dudley and three others. In his work Metallum Martis , published in 1665, he claimed to have "made Iron to profit with Pit-cole". However, considerable doubt has been cast on this claim by later writers. An important development in the early 17th century was the introduction of the slitting mill to the Midlands area. In the Black Country,
10396-680: The region is covered by the Midlands Air Ambulance , except Warwickshire is covered by the Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance , based at Coventry Airport ; both are charity-funded. Sir Anthony Bamford of Staffordshire is the richest British industrialist, at around £3.15bn in 2014; Sir James Dyson is second (£3bn). Selective schools are in low numbers as follows: Birmingham (8), Walsall (2), Wolverhampton (1), Warwickshire (6), Stoke-on-Trent (1), and Telford and Wrekin (2). The highest proportion per head therefore
10509-774: The region's population resides in the West Midlands county, 20.17% in Staffordshire, 10.49% in Worcestershire, 9.91% in Warwickshire, 8.56% in Shropshire, and 3.37% in Herefordshire. Business Link West Midlands was based on the Quinton Business Park in Quinton , next to Highways England . NHS West Midlands, the strategic health authority was in Edgbaston. The West Midlands Ambulance Service
10622-634: The region. Black Country Day takes place on 14 July each year. Originally in March, the day was later moved to 14 July—the anniversary of the invention of the Newcomen steam engine—and now coincides with a wider series of events throughout the month aimed at promoting Black Country Culture called the Black Country Festival. The Black Country Anthem was written by James Stevens and is performed by Black Country band The Empty Can. The idea for
10735-405: The ribs of a half decayed corpse. The majority of the natives of this Tartarian region are in full keeping with the scenery – savages, without the grace of savages, coarsely clad in filthy garments, with no change on weekends or Sundays, they converse in a language belarded with fearful and disgusting oaths, which can scarcely be recognised as the same as that of civilized England. This work was also
10848-675: 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 . In 1913, the Black Country was the location of arguably one of the most important strikes in British trade union history when the workers employed in the area's steel tube trade came out for two months in a successful demand for a 23 shilling minimum weekly wage for unskilled workers, giving them pay parity with their counterparts in nearby Birmingham. This action commenced on 9 May in Wednesbury, at
10961-582: The site. The history of industry in the Black Country is connected directly to its underlying geology. Much of the region lies upon an exposed coalfield forming the southern part of the South Staffordshire Coalfield where mining has taken place since the Middle Ages. There are, in fact several coal seams, some of which were given names by the miners. The top, thin coal seam is known as Broach Coal . Beneath this lies successively
11074-634: The south of the ridge, water flows into the Stour and thence to the Severn and the Bristol Channel. At Dudley and Wrens Nest, limestone was mined. This rock formation was formed in the Silurian period and contains many fossils. One particular fossilized creature, the trilobite Calymene blumenbachii , was so common that it became known as the "Dudley Bug" or "Dudley Locust" and was incorporated into
11187-524: The top ten such schools nationally were in Warwickshire, where in the CV37 postal district prices were 34% higher than the county as a whole. Hamstead, West Midlands Hamstead is an area straddling the border of Birmingham and Sandwell , England , between Handsworth Wood and Great Barr , and adjacent to the Sandwell Valley area of West Bromwich . Hamstead Colliery was worked from
11300-417: The town as well as being a friend to many of its leading citizens, so his portrait of the surrounding area was largely positive. He was the author of the famous early description of the Black Country as "black by day and red by night", adding appreciatively that it "cannot be matched, for vast and varied production, by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe". Burritt used the term to refer to
11413-408: The towns of Stratford upon Avon , birthplace of writer William Shakespeare ; Rugby , the birthplace of Rugby football ; and Nuneaton , birthplace to author George Eliot . The official region contains the ceremonial counties of Herefordshire , Shropshire , Staffordshire , Warwickshire , West Midlands and Worcestershire . There is some confusion in the use of the term "West Midlands", as
11526-700: The world, designed by Major Tony Rolt , and built at their factory in West Bromwich. Cadbury launched Dairy Milk in 1905, Bournville in 1906, Fruit & Nut in 1928, Whole Nut in 1930, Cadbury Roses in 1938, and the Cadbury Creme Egg in 1971. George and Richard Cadbury built their factory in 1879 and Bournville in 1893, named after the Bourn brook . Iceland (supermarket) opened its first store in Oswestry in 1970 – heralding
11639-494: Was Wolverhampton at 7.7%, the joint second highest (with Manchester) unemployment rate in England. Next is Sandwell with 7.1%, Birmingham with 7.0%, and Walsall with 6.4%. The lowest rate in the region is the district of Stratford-on-Avon , with 1.6% – one of the lowest unemployment rates in England. In the 2015 general election , the Conservatives gained the largest share of the region by popular vote and took control of
11752-538: Was an early eugenicist rooted in improving animal breeding stock and examining heredity. He invented terms eugenics and nature versus nurture . His limited calls for human eugenics were widened by the German Society for Racial Hygiene in 1905 founded by Alfred Ploetz , which coupled with the racial superiority fallacies of Aryanism reached its nadir in genocidal antisemitism . Moral teachings and inherent repulsions towards human eugenics were overcome by
11865-861: Was constructed at Spring Vale in Bilston by the Staffordshire Steel and Ingot Iron Company, a development followed by the construction of an open-hearth steelworks at the Round Oak works of the Earl of Dudley in Brierley Hill , which produced its first steel in 1894. 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
11978-577: Was discovered beyond the western boundary fault at Baggeridge at a depth of around 600 yards. A broken ridge runs across the Black Country in a north-westerly direction through Dudley, Wrens Nest and Sedgley, separating the Black Country into two regions. This ridge forms part of a major watershed of England with streams to the north taking water to the Tame and then via the Trent into the North Sea whilst to
12091-400: Was founded in the early 13th century. A number of Black Country villages developed into market towns and boroughs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, notably Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Coal mining was carried out for several centuries in the Black Country, starting from medieval times, and metalworking was important in the Black Country area as early as the 16th century spurred on by
12204-541: Was located in Smethwick and had 'thick coal' as shown in written accounts from 1878 and coal was also heavily mined in Hamstead , further east, whose workings extended well under what is now north Birmingham . Smethwick and Dudley Port were described as "a thousand swarming hives of metallurgical industries" by Samuel Griffiths in 1872. Another geological definition, the seam outcrop definition, only includes areas where
12317-629: Was not understood; the altitude records for the UK have not been exceeded since; Project Excelsior in the US in 1960 would later reach 20 miles (110,000 ft). Philip Lawley of Burton upon Trent was first person to realise that chemical damage to DNA caused cancer (at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London) in the early 1960s. Francis Galton (d. 1911) of the Darwin–Wedgwood family 's Birmingham branch
12430-447: Was one of the Industrial Revolution 's birthplaces. Either the 30-foot-thick coal seam close to the surface or the mix of coalworks , cokeworks , ironworks , glassworks , brickworks and steelworks (which produced high levels of soot and air pollution at the time) led to the area's name, which was first recorded in the 1840s. The Black Country has no single set of defined boundaries. Some traditionalists define it as "the area where
12543-604: Was the site of Britain's first traffic lights in 1927. Infrared cameras were developed at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern (with EMI Electronics) in 1967. The world's first Maglev train operated at Birmingham Airport in 1983. The tallest freestanding structure in the region was the chimney of Ironbridge power station at 673 ft. John Baskerville of Birmingham, a former stone carver, largely invented fonts, or typefaces , for printing. Much of
12656-474: Was then a prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral . Gresley's opening paragraph starts "On the border of the agricultural part of Staffordshire, just before you enter the dismal region of mines and forges, commonly called the 'Black Country', stands the pretty village of Oakthorpe", "commonly" implying that the term was already in use. He also writes that "the whole country is blackened with smoke by day, and glowing with fires by night", and that "the 'Black Country' ...
12769-552: Was triggered by discussions at the Lunar Society of Birmingham at Soho House , Boulton's house, and products were carried along the BCN Main Line canal. Soho Manufactory was the first man-made-powered factory in world. Chance Brothers of Smethwick built the glass for The Crystal Palace in 1851. Smethwick Engine , now at Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum , is the oldest working steam engine, made in 1779, and
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