The Black Country Living Museum (formerly The Black Country Museum) is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings, located in Dudley in the West Midlands of England. It is close to Dudley Castle in the centre of the Black Country conurbation. The museum occupies 105,000 square metres (26 acres) of former industrial land partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard, disused lime kilns and former coal pits. It was first opened in 1978, and since then many more exhibits have been added to it.
The Museum preserves some important buildings from around the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton; mainly in a specially built village. Most of the buildings are original, relocated from their original sites. As a living museum, these form a base from which knowledgeable, local demonstrators portray life in the period from the 1850s to the 1950s.
The Museum is constantly changing as new exhibits, especially buildings in the village, are being added.
Read more about Black Country Living Museum: Museum - General Description, Exhibition Area, The Village and Old Trades, Recent Developments - The Old Birmingham Road, Designation Status, 1930s Fairground, The Transport Collection
Famous quotes containing the words black, country, living and/or museum:
“A great black presence beats its wings in wrath.
Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes.
Some small grey fur is pulsing in its grip.”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.”
—HonorĂ© De Balzac (17991850)
“Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Things will not mourn you, people will.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 191, lelo NoEau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)