15 July 2016 - Chapel Lane Caravan Club site, Wythall near Birmingham

Today dawned as a jeans and socks and sneakers day; the summer skirt and sandals were stowed away until July realised it was meant to do summer. We headed off, suitably clad, westward along the M42, then northwards up the M5 as far as Dudley where we turned west again to arrive at the Black Country Live Museum just in time for the opening at 10am. 

Canal yards

This is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings  on 26 acres of former industrial land, partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard, disused lime kilns and former coal pits. It was opened in 1978, and since then over the intervening years, many more exhibits have been added. As each building is added to the site, it is dismantled brick by brick, bolt by bolt, from its previous site and erected in exactly the same manner on the museum site. The interior or staging of the building must be as documented. For instance, a squatter’s cottage moved onto the site is decorated a la 1930s only because the last occupant who lived in it until the 1960s was able to verify the style in which it had actually been.

The museum has the largest collection of Black Country-made vehicles in the world. From the early 1900s the motor industry grew rapidly. Black Country manufacturers responded, including Sunbeam, Turner, A.J.S., Star, Briton, Bean, Clyno and Guy, producing motorcycles, cars, vans, lorries, buses and trolley buses.

1930s street

We wandered in and out of the houses, cottages, garages, bakeries, workshops, boat yards, down into a coal mine, and explored all that there was on offer. There is even a fish ’n chip shop on site, staff in period costume, serving food so good that customers queued in long lines. When the queue had diminished to within site of the door, part way through the afternoon, Chris checked the chips out for himself and agreed they were as good as the old days, except these days regulations do not allow for deep frying in lard.

                                                                      
We learned that many films and TV series are filmed on the site, such as “Peaky Blinders” which, according to our informer, is too gory and uncouth to be watched, but providing a welcome source of income. 

We learned too about Mary Macarthur, trade unionist and women’s rights campaigner who made the headlines in 1910 when she urged the small chain workers, all underpaid and over worked women, in Cradley Heath to strike. There is so much more to this story but this is not the place to recount it all.

A relocated house complete with subsidance

We learned too that the museum is a popular school trip destination, again bringing in income to supplement the entry fees and the occasional grant. They were out en masse today.

After nearly six hours on our feet, it was nice to set off home, albeit on the busy motorway, the traffic causing the return trip to take twice as long as the morning’s.