14 July: Black Country Day

Today is Black Country Day – 10 things you didn’t know about the Black Country.

1. First of all, where is it? The short answer is an area within the West Midlands of England. It’s sometimes said that no two people in the Black Country can agree on where its boundaries are but it commonly refers to the region that includes Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Stourbridge and West Bromwich.
2. Why Black Country? There are two possible explanations. One is that it is because of the South Staffordshire coal seam - also known as "the 30ft seam" - said to be the thickest layer of coal in Britain. It comes to the surface in this area, making the soil black.
3. The other is down to the area’s industrial heritage. It has a long history of metalworking, dating back to the English Civil War, when weapons for the Royalists were produced there. During the Industrial Revolution, it became one of the most industrialised parts of the UK, with coal, metal and glass among the commodities produced there. These activities caused a lot of air pollution. It was observed by several writers at the time that the area was covered in soot and smoke by day and glowed red with fires from the plants and factories by night.
4. Queen Victoria is said to have closed her carriage curtains when travelling through the Black Country as she was so offended by the sight of the industrial landscape.
5. All that polluting industry may be gone now, but a sense of shared history and tradition in the area has kept the term in use. This has extended to the Black country having its own tartan and a flag, designed by Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School in Stourbridge and registered with the Flag Institute in July 2012. The flag background is black and Red, with chains in the foreground representing a typical product manufactured in the area (The anchors and chains for the Titanic were manufactured at Netherton in the Black Country). The central White area represents a glass cone, a symbol of the region's glass-making heritage since 1790. The flag has not been without its controversies. A former local MP objected to the flag because the images and colours were suggestive of slavery.
6. The Black country may well have been the inspiration for Mordor in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien grew up in the West Midlands. The word “Mordor” itself is from the Elvish Sindarin language, and translates into English as “Dark, or Black, Land”. It has even been suggested that Bilbo Baggins was named after a Black Country Politician called Mayor Ben Bilboe of Bilston, although there’s little firm evidence that this is the case.
7. Charles Dickens wrote about the Black Country, too, in his 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop. In it, he described how the factory chimneys "Poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air".
8. Famous people from the area include comedians Jasper Carrott, Frank Skinner and Lenny Henry and also Beverley Knight, Noddy Holder, Julie Walters and Robert Plant.
9. A nickname for Black Country natives is Yam Yams, because they say ‘yow am’ or ‘yow’m’ (meaning you am, you are). Other words from Black Country dialect include baynt (am not, from ‘be not’), bibble (pebble), blarting (crying), bobowler (large moth), bostin (brilliant), cantin (gossiping), clarnet (fool) and gobiron (harmonica).
10. Black Country Day was originally celebrated in March, but was later moved to 14 July to commemorate the invention of the Newcomen beam engine in 1712. This was the earliest documented working steam engine, built near Dudley and used to pump water from coal mines belonging to Lord Dudley.

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