A Bostin' Day Out, Bab!

 On Sunday we met up with our mates, Claire and Gareth at The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley. Built on reclaimed industrial land, the open air museum has over fifty shops, houses and industrial buildings rescued from around The Black Country, the area made up of the metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Walsall, Sandwell and the city of Wolverhampton.

 To our eternal shame, despite the museum opening in 1978 and being just seven miles from our front door, neither Jon or I had ever been but with it forming the backdrop of numerous episodes of Peaky Blinders along with The Colour Room, the gorgeous film based on Clarice Cliff's early life, we were already familiar with the streets. Stan and Ollie, the Steve Coogan film which we've yet to see, was also filmed there. 

Demolished in 2001 before it could be listed, The Elephant and Castle was built in 1905 and stood in the centre of Wolverhampton. Typical of its era, it had a public bar for the working class and for the middle class and had a separate smoking room with slightly higher prices. The pub’s clientele was known to be diverse, with Wolverhampton being home to many thousands of Irish immigrants during the 19th century. After World War Two, both the Irish and Commonwealth citizens from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean could be found enjoying a drink in the Elephant & Castle. The building has been painstakingly replicated by craftsmen from around the Black Country.

International tourists aside, visiting the museum really does feel like you've wandered on to the set of Peaky Blinders.

Broome’s Garage depicts a 1930’s garage and is a replica of the Conway Garage in Sedgley Road, owned by the late Wolverhampton garage mechanic Alex Broome. Alex Broome worked for Sunbeam as a racing mechanic and when the company closed he started his own garage in 1936 which he ran into his eighties.

With the four of us obsessed with architectural salvage and weird old tat in general, we spent ages wandering around the Builder's Merchants Yard, a replica of one which stood at the entrance of Bilston's Stone Quarry in 1930. Apparently, a reluctance to waste anything is a Black Country trait, I'd say it was just common sense especially with things as gorgeous as these carved stone heads.

Horses provided the key to transport in the Black Country well into the twentieth century. Used as draught animals to haul narrow boats loaded with goods on the canals, drag heavy coal carts and pull trams, carriages, milk floats, delivery wagons and fire engines.

Heavy horses, usually shires, like William (above), were used for haulage in heavy industry. His stable was built in 1900 and was dismantled and moved from Burntwood. 

Sidebotham's Trap Works were constructed in Wednesfield in 1913, the the major centre for the manufacture and worldwide export of small animal traps. The stencils below were used to label the packaging crates and bear the names of the far-flung destination ports to which the goods were transported.

Established in 1848 and still trading as a family business, Noah Bloomer manufactured chains, anchors and other marine equipment from their factory in Quarry Bank.

 

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, 90% of all of Britain's chains were manufactured in the Black Country. 

The boys queued for fish & chips at Hobbs and Sons Restaurant, which was built in 1930 and transported brick by brick from Dudley's High Street. Being an authentic Black Country chippy, beef dripping is the medium used to fry food. Luckily there's a separate fryer for us vegetarians so I was able to enjoy a cow-free bag of chips (my first since June 2019!)

We ate them inside The Glass & Bottle Inn, a traditional working class spit 'n' sawdust pub (see the middle photo in montage below), which was transported brick by brick from nearby Brierley Hill where it had stood since 1840. 

Harry Morrall’s menswear shop was a familiar sight in Hall Street, Dudley, where he traded from 1928 to 1935. 

Based in West Bromwich, Gripton's Radio Shop traded until 1940. 

A.Preedy & Sons was a Black Country chain of tobacconists, founded in Dudley in 1868 and still trading in Walsall well into the 1980s. My Mum used to take her lighter to be refilled in the Park Street branch every week. 

Thomas Cook ran a small confectionery business at 21, Bond Street, Dudley between 1871 and 1901. This shop is a replica based on archive material.

Built in the latter half of the 19th Century, E Langston's Hardware shop is an original building and came from Piper's Row in Wolverhampton. 

 

Hartills motor cycle shop was located in Mount Pleasant, Bilston (where Claire & I visited Bilston Museum & Crafts Gallery a few weeks ago).Abraham Hartill opened the shop in 1937, having moved from a smaller unit in the same block. He sold mainly second-hand motorcycles, some fifteen or so a week. 

The Workers' Institute was designed by Albert Thomas Butler (1872-1952), a local architect, in the Arts & Crafts style. Originally sited in  Cradley Heath, it stands as a landmark to one of the most significant yet hidden achievements of British labour history. The interior of the Workers' Institute is set in 1935 and the ground floor houses the union offices along with the auditorium where trade union meetings would have taken place in the 1930s.

The Chainmaker's House was one of a pair built in 1886 and transported from Old Hill. The interior is displayed to reflect the domestic life of a prosperous chainmaker in 1914 whilst the chain business was still a strong market for the shipbuilding and dock trades. 

 

Built with a washhouse, privy and coalhouse, it reflects the improving standards for the working classes.

The flat above Humphrey Bros. is decorated in typically 1930s style. The Art Deco wallpaper added some jazz age glamour to the rather gloomy interior and drab furniture.

 

It was Remembrance Sunday, hence the Home Guard being out in force. 

There were once 42 mine shafts where the Museum now stands, today just two remain. 

Visitors to the Black Country of all sexes are often a little disconcerted by being called Bab 

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen built the world's first successful steam engine which was used for pumping water from the coal mines on the site. In 1986, after ten years of research, the museum completed the construction of a full-scale working replica of the engine which is housed within the building below.

Photo courtesy of Claire - follow her blog (HERE)

Thanks, Claire & Gareth, we really did have a bostin' day!