The Black Country as it should be defined?

There are some topics I treat very carefully here on the blog; some that cause so much anguish, heated debate and recrimination that I feel scared to approach them even tangentially, and so it is with reckless abandon that today, I run an article about the definition of the geographic area we refer to as ‘The Black Country’.

Whether a particular town is in the hallowed area is always hot debate; usually, the question is relating to Wolverhampton, but Walsall and satellites are often questioned by the hardened philosopher.

Speaking as someone who’s had some quite fearsome emails when I’ve included Brownhills carelessly in the Black Country, I actually don’t feel the name is geographical, I think it’s a kinship and spiritual thing.

Hitler did not take the loss of Bilston well. Don’t play if easily offended.

When the signs went up here for the Black Country Car Cruising Enforcement Zone, some of the annoyance in messages I received was almost incandescent.

I’ve worked in and around the Black Country all my life, pretty much. I speak it’s tongue, I adore it’s humour, I feel part of it. Walsall and Brownhills coal, clay and limestone floated down our canals to fuel the industrial revolution there; our reservoir – Norton Pool or Chasewater – collected water from our mines and streams and fed the whole canal network.

To me, spiritually then, we are of, if not geographically, the Black Country.

With this in mind, I’m opening the debate here today with an essay spotted in the Blackcountryman Magazine first issue, from 1967, by Peter ‘Pedro’ Cutler. It’s a very interesting piece, and I think somewhat controversial.

The author is listed only as J.M.F. which doesn’t ring a bell. Anyone?

I have a number of issues with this treatise, and I know Peter does too; my main one is constant reference to the ‘West Midlands Plateau’ which jarrs badly, and I find the tone a bit off. But give it a read. Pick the bones out of it. Comment here. Let’s have a debate.

Thanks to Peter for a wonderful spot – the text has been machine converted from a scan, so excuse any typos.

Comment here if you’ve something to add, or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Cheers.

What is the Black Country?

PERHAPS no area has suffered more misrepresentation than the Black Country. Local people are constantly being annoyed by the fatuous and puerile knowledge of the area shown by national figures and by the national press. The depth was reached by one famous Sunday newspaper which recently spoke of activities in Wedncsbury, then headed a photograph which illustrated this particular article with a caption speaking of the town as being in the Potteries!

To many southerners, the Black Country seems to be a term that is used to describe all of this country north of Stratford-upon-Avon. To others, probably avid readers of Arnold Bennett’s novels, the Black Country will be forever associated with the area around Stoke-on-Trent. There is really no excuse for this attitude. The borders of the Black Country can be clearly defined, although a true ‘Black Country mon’ might say that he carries the characteristics of the area with him everywhere.

Historically, the West Midland plateau has not played a significant part in the development of this country until recent times. At the time of the Norman Conquest, Domesday Book shows the plateau as being sparsely populated and economically insignificant. The position remained essentially un­altered during the whole of the medieval period. No major river ran through the area, and at the time when traffic and trade was concentrated on the natural water­ways, this meant that the plateau was isolated from developments in the rest of the country.

No major Roman road passed through the region. Activity, there­fore, tended to bypass the Midland plateau and concentrate on the river valleys to the north, south and west, or in the booming manu­facturing town of Coventry. This situation was changed only when the building of canals opened the plateau to influence from the out­side.

The development of the region during the early industrial revolu­tion laid down in outline the boundaries of the region we know as the Black Country. Con­temporary writers were careful to differentiate between two types of activity they observed to he appear­ing on the plateau. In the first plaee, they saw the towns of Wal­sall, Wolverhampton and especially Birmingham appearing as large manufacturing centres with also a commercial element in their popu­lation. The central part of the plateau supplied the raw materials, coal and iron, that were used in these large towns. Of course, some manufacturing was also carried out in this central area, but the distinc­tion is on the whole a valid one.

The three towns were themselves also separated from the mineral producing areas by very definite belts of open country or waste-land.

Between Birmingham and West Bromwich lay the country district of Handsworlh Heath. This area known as Soho gets its name, so it is said, from this being the cry of the hunters as they rode over the open fields and waste-land then characteristic of Handsworlh.

Between Walsall and Wedncsbury, a belt of waste-land known as the Pleck, a word meaning ‘waste,’ divided the manufacturing towns from the coal and iron mining area. To the north, heathland lay beyond Bilston, scparating it from Wolverhampton; the modern names Stow Heath and Monmoor Green today indicate where this belt of land was situated.

We have the picture, then, of three busy manufacturing towns on the edge of the plateau divided from the mineral producing region by belts of open country. It is this mineral producing region that should rightly be known as the Black Country, and no other area. It is possible to speak of this as a specific region because the nature of the coalfield in South Stafford­shire did produce close and com­pact development.

To the south and west, the field is limited by faults running approxi­mately from north to south. Only in the later nineteenth eentury were investigations lor coal beyond these faults attempted. To the north, a line of faults known as the Bentley Faults running roughly from east to west divide the coalfield from the deeper, thinner seams found in the Cannock Chase area. Only in the south is the field not clearly defined; here the seams peter out around Halesowen. The faults in the east, north and west concen­trate development of the coalfield within a very closely defined area, and this is rightly the Black Country. In this region until com­paratively recently, the exploration of the rich coal seams with their associate deposits of iron, clay and limestone, provided employment for the majority of the inhabitants.

On the coalfield itself, we must distinguish between two types of development. The earliest mining was naturally located in those areas where the seams lay at a very shallow level. This ‘outcrop’ coal, as it is called, was found particu­larly in Wednesbury, Darlaston. Willenhall, Bilston. Coseley, Tipton, Dudley, Brierley Hill and the adjacent villages. In these centres the early development of the Black Country was most noticeable. The coal also lay at a greater depth, ‘concealed,’ in three other areas, West Bromwich. Smethwick and Oldbury. Here development came somewhat later and lasted a little longer than elsewhere.

These towns, originally small villages and hamlets, on the ex­posed and concealed coalfield, form the Black Country as it should be defined.

The isolation of the region in medieval times had already laid the basis for the development of a strongly conservative, inward look­ing culture on the plateau. The industrial revolution did not seri­ously change this.

Mining communities are always close-knit, introspective groups, and those of the Black Country were no exccplion. The development of the region was also slow enough to prevent a sudden influx of immi­grants who could radically alter the traditions of the area; the only out­side element to come into the Black Country in any quantity was the Irish. Their arrival caused consi­derable disturbance, but does not seem to have seriously affected the culture of the Black Country.

As a prosperous region, com­pared to many others, the Black Country was also able to retain much of its population which then contributed to stabilise the customs and traditions of the area. All these factors tended to produce a tightly knit community, inward looking and with peculiar customs asso­ciated often with the distant past.

The ending of the dominance of mineral production in the Black Country, the ease of obtaining transport and the spread of hous­ing beyond the boundaries set by the old coalfield has inevitably blurred many of the distinctions noted above between the area and its adjacent regions. However, it would be easy to ignore the effect of this long history on the people of the Black Country. As a pros­perous, rich area, the Black Coun­try still retains its population and its stability. The traditions of the past cannot easily be dropped in the space of a few years. Although the character of the region has changed and is still changing rapidly, the sense of belonging to a distinct local community is very strong today.

We can still speak of the Black Country as that area lying on the southern part of the South Stafford­shire coalfield, although its boun­daries today are not so clearly defined and its activities no longer base themselves on the exploita­tion of its mineral wealth.

J.M.F.