The Black Country Book

Product DescriptionThe Black Country BookThe Black Country is an area of the West Midlands conurbation, lyingto the north and west of Birmingham. By the late nineteenth centurythe area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in thenation: the South Staffordshire coal mines, the coal coking operations,and the iron foundries and steel mills that used the local coal to fire theirfurnaces, produced a level of air pollution that had few equals anywherein the world. Indeed, Charles Dickens described how the area’s localfactory chimneys ‘Poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light,and made foul the melancholy air’. The anchors and chains for the illfated liner RMS Titanic were manufactured in the Black Country in thearea of Netherton.However, the history of the area stretches back far further than itsindustrial past. This book traces the origins of the area from its earliestinhabitants, through the Middle Ages, and up to the present day.