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
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