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 local artefacts encompassing some of the many products which were made by Black Country industry, cast iron hollow ware, animal traps, vehicles, chain, anchors, enamels, weighing scales, laundry irons, nails, locks and fire clay products. The exhibition includes more fragile items such as glassware, reflecting the centuries-old industry that produced lead crystal glass and the Joseph Chance glass works between Oldbury and Smethwick. The museum site contained 42 disused mine shafts, most of which had been filled in. Two are preserved, one at the Racecourse Colliery and Brook Shaft. In 1712, Thomas Newcomen built the world's first successful steam engine