Underground Mine
"Mind yer 'ed!". Take a trip with 'Lija Wedge' into the world of the Black Country coalminer in the 1850s.
The Black Country was famous for the Staffordshire Thick Coal, which lay beneath much of the area. The coal occurred in seams of up to 10 metres thick, far bigger than anywhere else in Britain and the extraction of this coal led to problems of subsidence as the ground dropped to fill the holes left.
"Into the Thick" is an underground experience created by the Black Country Living Museum to show how miners worked the Thick Coal and other seams in the Black Country in about 1850. It is a drift mine with a sloping tunnel down which you can walk into a maze of roadways and working areas so that you can experience the underground conditions in a safe yet realistic way.
Audio visual techniques and advanced electronics bring to life the conditions of the workers in the Black Country mines and parties of visitors spend 35 minutes underground with their guide.
