Our Study In Year 3 we decided to look the Black Country, because we go there every year when we visit the Black Country Living Museum as a part of our topic on The Victorians.
The museum contains many historical buildings taken from all over the local area and rebuilt brickby-brick on the site to celebrate the areas industrial heritage.
On our trip we mainly focused on the Victorian buildings and compared them with the buildings we see today.
When we got back to school, we also looked into the history of the area around the museum. We were very interested to find out why it is known as ‘The Black Country’. U
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Victorian Buildings
House
Store Front
Pub
Where is ‘The Black Country’?
Why is it called ‘The Black Country’? During the Victorian era, industry (‘making things’) became big business. This has come to be known as the ‘Industrial Revolution’. Coalmining was very important in Victorian times. In the area around Dudley, there were many coalmines. There were also iron works and steel mills that used the coal to power their furnaces. However, as coal is burned it gives of lots of thick black soot and smoke. This led to a high level of air pollution at that time. When the black dust settled on objects, houses and the surrounding countryside everything became coated in a layer of black. Thus, this region became known as the Black Country.
We looked closely at some historical pictures of the area.
We used sketching pencils and charcoal to create our own Black Country scenes.
What is it like now? The Black Country is no longer ‘black’. Most of the heavy industries have gone and the government has introduced strict rules about air pollution. The 20th century saw a decline in coal mining and the industry finally came to an end with the closure of the last colliery in the area in 1968. P
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Also, around this time, many of the large factories also closed, including the Round Oak Steel Works. As a result, the area has suffered from high unemployment and is classed as one of the poorest areas in the UK. More recently, these areas have been designated as ‘Enterprise Zones’ and have been redeveloped. For example, the Round Oak Steel Works site was developed as the Merry Hill Shopping Centre.