[DD.]

http://www.bclm.co.uk/

Black Country Museum

At the Black Country Museum you can give your admission fee as a gift aid and this will then entitle you to a free visit within 12 months. Admission is only about £11 which is cheap compared to other places.

[matron]

I am obviously quite unable to lay my hands on my photos from the Black Country Museum despite the fact we have been about four times.  :oops:

I will try and describe it instead.

It is a Victorian town created using original buildings from the area that have been moved to the site. There is a mine that you can go down and down there you will encounter some miners from the past telling you their story (they are manekins and video and sound are used). If you carry on down the road you will come to a couple of cottages all furnished (sparsely) for the age and you will find a person from the past there to tell you all about their lives (these are real people in costume). In the gardens they have the veg growing and in some there is livestock. A couple of weekends a year the people actually live in their houses and one time we were there they were spit roasting a small pork joint on the open fire.
Carry on down the road and you will come to an old fashioned fairground with the roundabouts run on steam engines.
A little further down and you come to the old schoolhouse where lessons still take place on certain days with the old slates and the teacher has a cane. For some of the attractions it is actually quite nice to follow a school party round because they are given all the information about their surroundings.
Now you come into the town proper by going over a bridge over part of the canal. The shops are here and you can actually buy sweets, cakes, engraved crystal / glass and other bits. There is a very nice fish and chip shop but you have to eat outside (be warned, there is usually a long queue here). There is also a pub where you can get a drink. There is a small cinema and some more houses of the era. If it's chilly pop into one as they have lovely roaring fires.
As you carry on round you come to the industrial side of things and there are examples of home where families made nails to earn a living. This comes out on the canal side and there are barges here to show how material was transported. There is also a forge and at certain times there is a demonstration of chain making (Fred Dibnah visited here and had a go).
There is a cafe over the other side of the canal where you can have lunch if you don't fancy fish and chips.
For an extra charge you can take a trip on the canal into the underground caverns used by the Victorians.
There are many other things to see and if you want to see and do everything I would say that it can't be done in a day.
When we were last there they were adding another set of buildings to show another era a little later.
I really love this place and sorry if I have waffled on.
I hope if you visit that you enjoy it as much.

[agapanthus]

It's a fantastic place to visit!!!! I had my first ever lardy cake there....it was massive and delish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

[Roll Roll]

I think Matron has almost covered it all. The only thing I can add is that the fantastic chip shop cookes their fish and chips in beef dripping, the flavor is out of this world, have a day off from your healthy eating campain. Phone them before going as they usually have extra invited attractions like traction engines, steam organs, vintage cars etc etc, you will be hard pushed to see it all in a day.

[PAH48]

It's a fantastic place to visit!!!! I had my first ever lardy cake there....it was massive and delish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Ya  can't beat a " Lardy cake"




Ekkers like I'm now drrrooooollllin', thanks  
Bye PAH ' an'droooolin'

[Scribbler]

I'd forgotten about lardy cake. Amazing stuff!

[digalotty]

i went for bonfire night and they lit the park up with kettles as parafin lanturns,    it realy took me back.

[traceyr]

The BEST fish and chips!

Well worth the one and half wait in the queue - the kids explored and came back periodically to see how close we were!  But OMG they were tasty!

[bailey]

i was born and bred in Dudley,,

I used to work for a realtive who owned a security company which looked after the black country museum,, on a mobile basis, one night i had to cover for the mobile patrol and visited the museum about 3 am,, after a recent snowfall,, the main street with the shops house ect was still lit and the scene was superb, just wished i had my camera with me..