Day 3.  The Black Country Living Museum

On By Little Miss TravellerIn Birmingham, Birmingham May 2017, The Midlands, United Kingdom

The weather forecast seemed reasonable so we decided to spend the day at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, West Midlands, ten miles west of Birmingham.  Although the museum’s postal address is Dudley, the nearest railway station is Tipton.  We bought return rail tickets costing approximately £5 each for the 20 minute journey from Birmingham New Street station, Tipton being on the Wolverhampton line with trains departing every 30 minutes.

Black Country Living Museum
Old trams in the Black Country Living Museum

On leaving the station it was a mystery which way to go as strangely the museum is not signposted from there although it is only a one mile walk to reach the entrance.  Glancing at our phone map helped us find our way to the main entrance where there is also a large museum car park costing £3 per day.  Entrance to the museum is quite expensive at £17.50 but we were able to take advantage of a 2 for 1 admission price by downloading a voucher from the Days out in the UK by train website.  Visitors just need to have valid rail tickets to Tipton for the day of their visit and bring along the accompanying voucher to receive the discount so please bear this in mind if you are considering a visit as it is a much cheaper alternative than arriving by car.

Black Country Living Museum
The re-created village centre at the open air museum

The museum first opened in 1978 and since then more than 50 shops, cottages and other buildings from the surrounding Black Country have been moved there brick by brick.  The main focus of the museum covers the period 1850-1950 and is located on former industrial land where coal pits, disused lime kilns and an old railway goods yard used to be.

Black Country Living Museum
Inside a Victorian classroom

The main entrance is in the old Rolfe Street Baths and here we found displays of local artefacts that were made in the industrial heartland of the Black Country.  These included vehicles, anchors, chains and enamels.  Stepping outdoors, vintage buses, trams and trolley buses were waiting to take visitors on the short journey to the village centre.  It’s possible to ride on these vehicles as often as you wish as there is no extra charge for using the transport.  The Victorian school of St. James was our first stop, the bus dropping us off nearby.  Entering the building, the cloakroom looked bare and uninviting with its rows of metal coat pegs attached to the walls.  Whilst in the classroom, the antiquated desks complete with slates, chalk and inkwells must have been uncomfortable with their hard, wooden seats lined up in rows facing the teacher’s blackboard.

Black Country Living Museum
Parade of shops in the village centre

Leaving the school we looked in each of the small shops which had all been authentically recreated and fitted out with stock that would have been available at that time.  The village shops include a general store, a chemist and a gentleman’s outfitters.  Each shop had a member of staff dressed in character to answer questions and relate stories of local life in those days.  The ‘sales assistant’ in H. Morrall’s outfitters demonstrated a bowler hat stretcher for us and showed us separate collars that could be clipped onto shirts each day.

Black Country Living Museum
Inside the gentleman’s outfitters

Alongside the shops and cottages there is also a working pub called ‘The Bottle and Glass Inn’ set out as it would have been in 1910 where people were enjoying pints of beer and pork scratchings.  Across the road from the pub stands the village chapel which has been recreated with wooden pews and a carved wooden balcony for the choir.

Black Country Living Museum
The fish and chip shop and gentlemen’s outfitters

A little further along we came to Hobbs & Co, a fish and chip shop just as it would have been in 1935, with an original frying range.  The fish and chip shop was open and seemed popular as the queue was snaking around the corner.  There were a few seats inside but most people were walking round eating their meal wrapped in paper.  It looked tempting  but as we had eaten fish and chips the previous evening we didn’t want the same again so soon afterwards.  Other working shops included a bakers selling freshly baked bread and cakes made from old recipes and a sweet shop selling traditional boiled sweets and humbugs weighed out on old fashioned scales from tall glass jars.

Black Country Living Museum
Tin baths outside the Hardware Store

Along the canal a typical dock basin has been re-created with several narrowboats on display on the nearby canal arm.  Around the dockyard we explored the 1880’s brick blacksmith’s forge.  There was even a lifting bridge between the ironworks and boat dock which was moved to the museum from Tipton.

Black Country Living Museum
Narrow boat at the open air museum

In one of the dockside sheds we were able to watch a demonstration of traditional chain making and how a strong link was forged before automated machinery was introduced.

Black Country Living Museum
A demonstration of chain making

The museum includes visits down an underground mine.  Tours run at 20 minute intervals and last about 30 minutes.  There is a small waiting room for tours as only 25 people can descend into the mine at one time.  We visited on a Saturday and managed to get on the next available tour, so equipped with hard hats and torches we descended on foot into the underground drift mine where we explored the life of a coal miner in the mid 1880’s.  Our guide was very informative and explained the principles of drift mining as we navigated the narrow tunnels by torchlight.

Black Country Living Museum
Life down the drift mine

There was so much to see at the museum, an old garage and petrol pumps, a 1930’s fairground and a worker’s institute.  Several times a steam engine trundled past pausing to allow visitors to inspect the engine.  It’s a splendid museum and definitely worth a full day’s visit on a fine day for anyone visiting Birmingham and the West Midlands.

Black Country Living Museum
Steam engine at the Black Country Living Museum

It started raining heavily as we walked back to the station but fortunately we only had to wait a few minutes for our train back into the city centre.  After enjoying tea and cakes in Grand Central we returned to our hotel for a short rest before going out to a nearby pub for dinner.  Thankfully, the heavy rain showers had cleared so we enjoyed a late evening stroll alongside the canal and were fortunate to witness a beautiful sunset.

If you are considering a short break in the West Midlands then you might be interested in checking out some of these lovely glamping sites.

Sunset over one of Birmingham's canals
Sunset over one of Birmingham’s canals

If you have enjoyed reading this post you may also like:

Other posts in this series:

A long weekend in Birmingham

Similar posts:

Tallinn Open Air Museum

The VASA Museum & Skansen Open Air Museum Stockholm

Advertisement

60 thoughts on “Day 3.  The Black Country Living Museum”

  1. I love these types of living museums. So much to see about how people lived in the “old” days. We have one here, called Fort Edmonton that will open July 1, after being closed for a year for a $165 million expansion and renovation. Hope to get back there some day as well. Thanks for sharing. Allan

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Fort Edmonton sounds somewhere I’d love to visit so I’ll look forward to reading about it when you eventually get back there. The Black Country Living Museum is splendid if ever you are close to Birmingham Allan. Hope your day goes well. Marion

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. Pingback: Day 3. SS Great Britain & Aerospace Bristol – Love Travelling Blog

  3. Pingback: Day 7.  Leppävaara and Glims Farmstead Museum, Espoo – Love Travelling Blog

  4. Pingback:  Day 4.  The Birmingham Back to Backs – Love Travelling Blog

  5. Pingback: Day 17.  The Helsinki Tram Museum and Beer Tram – Love Travelling Blog

  6. Pingback: Day 3. Visiting the National Mining Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh – Love Travelling

  7. Pingback: Going underground at the National Coal Mining Museum – Love Travelling

  8. Pingback: Day 3.  Exploring the Black Country Living Museum – MidlandsBiz Blog

  13. Pingback:  Day 4.  Visiting the Birmingham Back to Backs – Love Travelling

  16. Described wonderfully. You have to be journaling to remember as you do. I am lacking in that endeavor relying on photos for recollection. Yours are great. I will enjoy your posts as if I was with you. It’s best that way, because I am away bringing something back….a “bowler” for sure. Thanks for sharing.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  18. The school desks are an accurate description of the desks in a one teacher country school I attended for a few primary years while My Dad was buying an selling farms. The rest of your observations are quite interesting. My growing up years were spent in and near a gold rush city in Australia so there was much ancient farming and mining machinery around which is not on display in their local gold era museum.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  19. Pingback: Europe – Directory – The Intentional Traveler

  20. Pingback: The Intentional Traveler – Directory – The Intentional Traveler

  21. That sounds like a great museum. I love that it is a recreation of how life was. I know it was so much harder to live then, without all of the modern conveniences. I guess, as large as it is, you can understand the price for admission. That’s a lot of employees to pay and buildings to maintain.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  23. I’ve wanted to go to this museum Marion but we’ve never quite got around to it – thank you for the reminder about it!! It looks great, love the mine tour and the narrowboats but the whole museum looks interesting and fun. Great tip about taking the train too!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    1. The Black Country Living Museum was really nice to visit Joy. It’s years since I was at Beamish, it’s similar but probably slightly smaller. I forgot to mention that the ticket is valid for a year, but it’s unlikely we’ll be heading back again so soon. I love these Living history museums. We are so fortunate to have much easier lives than our ancestors but hopefully they were happy Living in close knit family communities. Not looking forward to the clock change!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  27. We were regular visitors as local school children to the Black Country Museum so this brings back lots of memories! You can also travel on one of the canal boats and try “legging” where you move the boat through narrow tunnels by lying on your back on the vessell and literally walking your feet along the walls!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.