About The Museum's Work
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.
Our mission is to:
Preserve material relating to the story of the Black Country and to communicate that story to the widest possible audience.
We are achieving this by ...
- Collecting and preserving material relating to the story of the Black Country
- Researching the story of the Black Country
- Operating the open air museum and other displays
- Maintaining financial viability
- Promoting the Black Country
Exhibits and reserve collections cover the iron working and other manufacturing industries of the region and the social and working conditions of the people of the Black Country. The Museum occupies a 26 acre (12ha) open air site with displays which form a major tourist attraction welcoming over a quarter of a million visitors each year and 80,000 school children in educational parties.
The Black Country Living Museum was established as a charitable company in 1975 and took over responsibility for developing the open air museum in 1976. This was ten years after Dudley Council had first appointed staff to consider the possibility of such a museum following the original idea of the Borough Librarian in 1952.
The Museum is run by The Black Country Museum Trust Limited as a 'not for profit' organisation which earns most of its running costs from admission income and sales to visitors. Since work started on the Museum site, in Tipton Road Dudley, in 1976 the land has been treated for the effects of mineworkings and developed by the building of a number of buildings which have been rescued from various locations within the Black Country. These buildings are both historic exhibits in their own right and form the estates within which much of the rich history of the region can be portrayed.