Black Country Living Museum Next door is Alfred Preedy & Sons tobacconist shop, established in Dudley in 1868. James Gripton's radio shop is from the 1920s and this reconstruction, set in 1939, contains 'new' and second radios. The brick tunnel and cart entrance provide access to a late 1930s kitchen with an electric cooker made by Revo of Tipton. There is a radio workshop behind Gripton's and then the stairs lead to two first floor living rooms and two bedrooms which are all set in the late 1930s and furnished with original 1930s style furniture and wall paper. The Cradley Heath Workers' Institute was
Black Country Baggins may have been based on Tolkien's observation of Mayor Ben Bilboe of Bilston in The Black Country, who was a Communist and Labour Party member from the Lunt in Bilston. But the scholarly evidence for this is still questionable. The Black Country is notable for its small breweries and brewpubs which, unlike most in Britain, continued brewing their own beer alongside larger breweries which opened in the Industrial Revolution. Small breweries and brewpubs in the Black Country include Bathams in Brierley Hill, Holdens in Woodsetton, Sarah Hughes in Sedgley and the Old Swan Inn (Ma Pardoe's) in Netherton. They