The Black Country is a heavily urbanised area of the West Midlands in England, encompassing most of the Dudley and Sandwell metropolitan boroughs, along with Walsall and Wolverhampton.
The region was one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution. By 1785, the 23-kilometre stretch of road between Wolverhampton and Birmingham was already described as “one continuous town”. The name “Black Country”, first recorded in the 1840s, derives either from the nine-metre-thick coal seam lying close to the surface or from the intense industrial activity that followed — coal mining, iron smelting, glassmaking, brick production and steel manufacture blanketed the landscape in soot and smoke. That environmental legacy shaped both the character of the region and the lives of generations who worked in its foundries and pits.
