The Little Book of the Black Country (eBook)

3

THE BLACK COUNTRY

FROM RURAL BACKWATER TO
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Cartography began in the sixteenth century. The earliest map of the British Isles, in 1540, makes no mention of any settlement in the Black Country. Speed’s 1611 map of Staffordshire shows more detail: much of the Black Country is shown in Offlow and Seisdon Hundreds; Dudley is a part of Worcestershire, except the castle; Hales Owen is a detached part of Shropshire.

There was development during the seventeenth century, but mapping was still very much in its infancy. Roads and other features started to be included and town names varied; early Sturbridge became Stourbridge and Himley had a couple of iterations from Henley to Hirnley.

By the eighteenth century, maps developed a much more recognisable style to those we see today. They were less works of art and more useful for navigation. The major change came in 1801, when the first Ordnance Survey maps were published.

It took until the twenty-first century, however, for the descriptive name ‘The Black Country’ to appear on the latest version of the Ordnance Survey map – and that came about only because of a local campaign to have it included.

There has been much debate about who coined the term ‘Black Country’ and when? This question has been explored, researched, discussed and argued, and a number of theories have been put forward. Some have contended the name relates back to the eighteenth century, because black coal was visible at the surface in places, but no use of the name itself has yet been found prior to the 1840s.

Though the debate on the ‘when’ continues, the ‘why’ does seem to be fairly obvious. The region was the largest centre for mining and industry during the period of the Industrial Revolution. No other possible interpretation comes close to matching this theory. Certainly by 1846 the name was directly associated with industry.

In 1830 William Cobbett, in his book Rural Rides, wrote about the ‘truck’ or ‘tommy’ system operating in the ‘iron country’. The truck system (also known as ‘tommy truck’) was a system whereby workers were paid in whole or part with tokens, which could only be redeemed at shops owned by their employer at inflated prices. The system had existed since the fifteenth century and was outlawed in the late nineteenth century.

In 1843 Thomas Tancred, in his first report of the Midland Mining Commission on South Staffordshire, referred to the region as ‘The Coalfield’. In 1838 William Hawkes Smith commented on changes in ‘The South Staffordshire Mining District’ since 1780.

When writing the first edition of this book, the first recorded use of the phrase ‘Black Country’ that I could find came in a March 1846 report in Lloyds London Weekly Newspaper, reporting on the quarterly meeting of the ‘Black Country Ironmasters’. The search goes on for even earlier mentions, however. – I have since found another date in a copy of Staffordshire Advertiser, dated 27/11/1841, beating the original date by 5 years.

The year 1868 is believed to be when the phrase was first used in a book title. The book was Walks in the Black Country and Its Green Borderland by Elihu Burritt, the United States consul in Birmingham. By the 1860s there were many references to the use of the phrase and it appears to be widely used to describe the region.

GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY LESSONS

The Black Country Boundary has never been formally defined. It is not an administrative district in its own right and originally straddled the counties of Worcestershire and Staffordshire, with the Halesowen anomaly of being in Shropshire for some time. The most ‘traditional’ boundary is the land under which lies the 30ft-thick Staffordshire coal seam. This was the definition used by the founders of the Black Country Society in 1967.

In 1974 the County of West Midlands was formed. This boundary totally enclosed the whole area of the ‘traditional’ Black Country. The four authorities of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton all contain parts of the Black Country.

There are frequent, often heated, debates about what is in and what is out. The main areas that are ‘in’ are fairly obvious but the borderlands are slightly more difficult to categorise. Should Wolverhampton, Walsall and Smethwick be categorised as being ‘in’? Where does Halesowen fit into the picture? Should we be examining the credentials of Stourbridge more closely?

I am not qualified to decide on a definitive answer, and suspect that the question must be one of those enigmas of English geography that will never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. It is the only region I know where there is a well-known border of importance to its population, but many do not know for certain whether they are ‘in’ or not.

To answer my own question, for the purposes of this book, I take a ‘Catholic’ view of the border. This includes the four local authorities I have already mentioned, which means that traditional border disputes in parts of Walsall, Wolverhampton and Smethwick will not be issues for me.

One simple metaphoric border I will throw in is a personal one to everyone. If you identify yourself as having good Black Country ancestors, with roots in the region, and believe you are a Black Country ‘mon’ or ‘womon’, then you probably are.

Coal is the reason the Black Country became what it is. In Cradley the first record of coal being mined was in 1640. In the 1680s in Wednesbury, coal was dug out from beneath the topsoil. Netherton colliers could simply dig coal out of the hillside to about 100 yards without sinking a shaft. But, is all coal the same? It takes many forms and each is important in different ways. Coal was the ‘black gold’ of the Black Country, and it was important to be able to describe the types of coal.

Brooch (brewch) coal – was found 15ft down and was about 3ft 6ins thick. Brooch was first class house coal. It was fast-burning, produced plenty of heat and left only a tiny amount of ash.

Flying reed coal – was found below the brooch coal. It was not as good as brooch because it left more residue grey ash, but was still good house coal.

Thick coal – the most well-known coal, it was famed world-wide in coal circles. It was harder, very bright to look at and gave off excellent heat, but made dirty house coal with lots of white ash.

Heathen (haythen) coal – was difficult to sell because, while it was fast burning, it left large quantities of white ash and ‘bats’ in the fire grate.

The Hailstone is a Rowley Black Country legend. This monolithic structure was located on the slopes of the dolerite shelf forming part of the Rowley Hills. It is said the stone came to be because of a tremendous battle between Anglo-Saxon god Woden and Norse god Thor.

Woden, with his hounds, stood astride Rowley Hill and Thor stood on Clent Hills, surrounded by his warriors of the north. As the battle raged, Thor lifted a great boulder, placed it into his giant sling and tossed it at Woden. The boulder missed and landed within the side of the Rowley Hills.

The stone cast a shadow over all the Black Country people. Sixty feet high, it towered with a girth like the tower of an ancient castle. Locals came from all over to climb the craggy rock, knowing it was unique and precious.

Around 1879, industrialists blew up the stone. During the destruction two men, Fred Wright and Benjamin Bate, were killed. The rock was used to make roads and fireplaces around the Black Country.

Ocker Hill possibly got its name because of clay used in an early pottery business. In 1686 Dr Robert Plot, a Natural History writer described earthenware, commonly produced in Wednesbury, as being decorated with a reddish slip which they got from Tipton. The slip was ochre in colour and, until recently there were two exposures of ochre-coloured clay at Ocker Hill. Potters Lane, Wednesbury was only a mile from Ocker Hill. Not proof positive, but it does support the theory.

Willenhall was known as ‘Umpshire’ during the Industrial Revolution. Rumour has it that houses and pubs had holes in the wall so there was room for the hump when someone sat down. The deformities were said to have developed because of heavy labour carried out in the mines and factories before people’s bodies had fully formed. There may be some truth in this.

The lock trade around Willenhall was a prevalent local business and the nature of the work was likely to cause the deformities described.

Lye Waste seems to be a funny name for a village, if you could call it that. ‘The Waste’ has existed since 1650, when vagabonds took possession and built mud houses. The houses were built on ‘Waste Bank’, a slum area overlooking the Lye itself.

The dialect in the Waste was very distinctive, even for the Black Country. It was notable for the use of Anglo-Saxon words and endings to words. For example, ‘shoes’ were ‘shoen’ and ‘houses’ were ‘housen’. Lye residents were miners, anvil makers, bucket and bath makers and nail makers.

Gig Mill in Stourbridge derives its name from the manufacture of woollen goods. A ‘gig’ was a machine by which the ‘shag’ or...