Black Country Living Museum Wolverhampton (collectively known as the Black Country); mainly in a specially built village. Most buildings were relocated from their original sites to form a base from where demonstrators portray life spanning 300 years of history, with a focus on 1850-1950. The museum is constantly improving as new exhibits, especially buildings, are being added. The museum is close to the site where Dud Dudley first mastered the technique of smelting iron with coal instead of wood charcoal and making iron enough for industrial use. Having a claim to be "the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution", the Black Country is famous for
Beamish Museum is the use of costumed people to impart knowledge to visitors, rather than labels or interpretive panels (although some such panels do exist on the site), which means it "engages the visitor with history in a unique way". Beamish was the first regional open-air museum in England, and pioneered the concept of a living museum. By displaying duplicates or replaceable items, it was also an early example of the now commonplace practice of museums allowing visitors to touch objects. Beamish was influential on the Black Country Living Museum, Blists Hill Victorian Town and, in the view of museologist Kenneth Hudson,