Black Country Living Museum the museum's 1930s Street. On 15 June 2017 it was announced that the museum had been awarded £9.8 million from the National Lottery towards their £21.7m project BCLM: Forging Ahead, which will allow the museum to tell the story of the Black Country up to the closure of the Baggeridge Coal Mine in 1968. Plans include the translocation, recreation or replication at the Museum of Wolverhampton's Elephant & Castle pub, Dudley's Burgin’s Newsagents, a hairdressers, an NHS clinic, West Bromwich Gas Showroom and Dudley's Woodside Library, and a butchers all dating from the 1940s to the 1960s. The new plans
Black Country Living Museum Pawnbrokers Shop Black Country Living Museum Pawnbrokers Shop The Pawnbroker's Shop that has been reconstructed at Black Country Living Museum is one of a pair of cottages built in the 1840s, from School Lane in Himley. For an overview of Pawnbroking please see The History of Pawnbroking. Pawnshops prospered in areas where the wages were low and unstable. In the Black Country in 1870 there were 160 pawnbrokers in the area, Walsall had 15 and Wednesbury had 48. For a housewife with a large family to look after it was a constant struggle to make ends meet. It was not uncommon for