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 Black Country Day. The heavy industry which once dominated the Black Country has now largely gone. The 20th century saw a decline in coal mining and the industry finally came to an end in 1968 with the closure of Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley. Clean air legislation has meant that the Black Country is no longer black. The area still maintains some manufacturing, but on a much smaller scale than historically. Chainmaking is still a viable industry in the Cradley Heath area where the majority of the chain for the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty fleet is made in modern