General Description
A prominent landmark on the Tipton Road passing the main entrance is the frontage of Rolfe Street Baths, relocated from Smethwick. To the left of the main entrance is a more conventional exhibition area with displays of a number of artefacts made in the Black Country. This includes not only machinery but, various kinds of vehicles, and the iron products which are a major feature of Black Country industry. It also includes more fragile items such as glassware, reflecting the centuries old industry of lead crystal glass production as well as the Joseph Chance glass works between Oldbury and Smethwick.
Electric trams and trolleybuses transport visitors from the entrance in a re-created factory to the village area with thirty buildings situated by the canal basin. The museum is one of three in the UK with working trolleybuses, the others being The Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft and the East Anglia Transport Museum near Lowestoft. Nearby Walsall retained its trolleybuses until 1970. The village is only a short walk from the main entrance, passing the Newcomen atmospheric engine engine and 1930s fairground.
Coal mine displays include underground workings, colliery surface buildings and a replica of the 1712 Newcomen steam engine. In all, forty-two separate displays have either been re-erected or built to old plans to create a living open air museum.
Visitors to the museum may also take a narrowboat trip on the adjacent Dudley Canal, into the Dudley Tunnel.
Read more about this topic: Black Country Living Museum, Museum
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