Britain’s Friendliest Open Air Museum
Discover a fascinating world when you visit this urban heritage park in the shadow of Dudley Castle at the heart of the Black Country.
Historic buildings from all around the Black Country have been moved and authentically rebuilt at the Museum, to create a tribute to the traditional skills and enterprise of the people that once lived in the heart of industrial Britain.
Visitors are transported back in time from the modern exhibition halls to the canal-side village, where costumed demonstrators and working craftsmen bring the buildings to life with their local knowledge, practical skills and unique Black Country humour.
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Contact us: 0121 557 9643 or info@bclm.co.uk
School Holiday Activities
Saturday 24 July – Sunday 5 September
Back by popular demand – Fizzog Theatre Company will be entertaining visitors during the summer holiday with their unique brand of Black Country humour and street theatre.
Visitors can hop, skip and jump back in time and roll hoops along the cobbled street, play hopscotch on the pavement and test their skill with whip and top and skittles. A variety of parlour games are played in Station Road cottages and craft-making projects, including writing with old fashioned pen and ink and paper crafts take place in the old-fashioned school-room.
For further events taking place during the School Holidays please click on the events calendar button
News
Museum’s Most Ambitious Project Unveiled to Visitors
by BCLM
The Black Country Living Museum today unveiled one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken in its 34 year history - The Oldbury Buildings. Professor Carl Chinn M.B.E. performed the official opening in a ceremony at the Dudley Museum on the 16th of July 2010. The final phase of the Museum’s Streets Ahead development programme has created four more shops and five domestic interiors in its new 1930s High Street – Old Birmingham Road.
Built with a £132,550 grant from The Veolia Environmental Trust, awarded through the Landfill Communities Fund, The Oldbury Buildings have been reconstructed from numbers 12,14,16 and 18 Birmingham Road in Oldbury. The Trust’s grant, matched by contributions from the British Motorcycle Charitable Trust, Charles Hayward Foundation, Douglas Turner Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, The Patrick Trust and The Owen Family Trust, as well as a significant contribution from the Museum’s own funds, bring to life a builders and plumbers merchant, a motorcycle dealers, a tobacconist and a radio store.
David Eveleigh, Curator of the Black Country Living Museum said: ”These four smoke blackened shops from the Black Country are important because they are so ordinary. Buildings like this once typified Black Country towns but industrial decline created an urgent need to record and preserve the fabric of these old towns.”
The radio dealer will introduce Museum visitors to the story of mass communication during the thirties whilst the small independent tobacconist alludes to a touch of Hollywood glamour at a time when the potential health risks of smoking were largely unknown. Locally built motorcycles line the window of the motorcycle shop and tell the tale of this important manufacturing success story and the builders and plumbers merchants gives a style snapshot during the house building boom of the 1930s.
The Executive Director of The Veolia Environmental Trust, Margaret Cobbold, said: “The Trust works to support community and environmental projects across the UK. The reconstruction of The Oldbury Buildings is an excellent example of how Landfill Communities Fund can help preserve our heritage, and bring it to life, for future generations. It’s great to see this exciting and important project being opened.”
Andrew Lovett, Director and Chief Executive of the Black Country Living Museum said: “The Black Country Living Museum has an international reputation for the preservation of buildings and for authentically rebuilding them at the Museum. The generous contributions made by our donors have allowed us to accurately reconstruct another fascinating part of Black Country history.”
Please click on the link below to view a video of the opening of the Oldbury Buildings.
The Museum as a Venue
The Black Country Living Museum offers a corporate venue with a difference just nine miles from Birmingham City Centre.
- Meetings & Conferences
- Presentations
- Product Launches
- Exhibitions
- Training Days and Seminars
- Corporate Evenings
- Company Family Days
Friends of the Museum
The Friends are the group of people who originally were the driving force behind the formation of the Black Country Living Museum in the 1970s.
Since then the Friends (a registered charity) have supported the Museum in collecting exhibits, manning displays, promoting the Museum, organising events and making donations.
The Friends are responsible for the services in the Museum Chapel and the Living History Weekends. In addition a group of Friends are trained to act as guides and demonstrators and there is a talks panel which provides speakers for outside bodies.
Our Collections
Labour Party banner, Tipton 1920 (ref 1975/064)
Since its establishment in 1975, the Museum has collected material relating to the Black Country and held this in trust for the benefit of the public.
In addition to this the Trust assumed responsibility for collections made in the name of the Black Country Museum by Dudley Museum and Art Gallery since 1967. In 2003 we took over the buildings and collections of the Lock Museum in Willenhall, now known as the Locksmith’s House.
Find out more about how we care for and exhibit our collections here.
Black Country Living Museum Trust.
Tipton Road, Dudley, West Midlands, DY1 4SQ.
A Private Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England Company No. 1226321 and Registered as a Charity No. 504481
The Museum is run by The Black Country Living Museum Trust as a ‘not for profit’ organisation which earns most of its running costs from admission income and sales to visitors.
The Black Country Living Museum deals with the history of the Black Country, the heart of industrial England, with recreated buildings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought to life by costumed demonstrators and trained educational guides.
