Black Country Living Museum Black Country Living Museum The Black Country Living Museum (formerly The Black Country Museum) is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings in Dudley, West Midlands, England. It is located in the centre of the Black Country, 10 miles west of Birmingham. The museum occupies of former industrial land partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard, disused lime kilns, canal arm and former coal pits. The museum opened to the public in 1978, and has since added over 50 shops, houses and other industrial buildings from around the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall and the City of
Coal mining in the Black Country was tipped off, thus forming the characteristic 'finger' spoil heaps of most small Black country pits. The rocky waste and clay was known as 'tocky'. The machine also on the rails behind the spoil wagon is an early electrical coal cutter the arm extending from the front moved through an arc and cut a corresponding arc in the coal seam which then allowed the coal to drop down in big lumps. One the shaft was established the sinking engine would either be dismantled and sold on or kept to use in an emergency. Coal mining in the Black Country Coal