Providence Chapel, Black Country Living Museum of the pews. The Museum was in fact interested in saving the whole building and in November 1975 the building was dismantled and the larger parts transferred to the Museum site. There were however problems with certain bricks which could not be used again. As luck would have it, it was possible to dismantle another chapel in Wolverhampton Street, Dudley which dated from 1828-9. This provided the right kind of brick for the chapel. Reconstruction at the Museum began in June 1977 and took two years, the chapel was dedicated in 1979. The chapel is a simple, brick-built, rectangle with
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