The Black Country

A few Black Country places such as Wolverhampton, Bilston and Wednesfield are mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters and chronicles and the forerunners of a number of Black Country towns and villages such as Cradley, Dudley, Smethwick, and Halesowen are included in the Domesday Book of 1086.  At this early date, the area was mostly rural. A monastery was founded in Wolverhampton in the Anglo-Saxon period and a castle and priory were built at Dudley during the period of Norman rule.  Another religious house, Premonstratensian Abbey of Halesowen, was founded in the early 13th century.  A number of Black Country villages developed into market towns and boroughs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, notably Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton.  Coal mining was carried out for several centuries in the Black Country, starting from medieval times, and metalworking was important in the Black Country area as early as the 16th century spurred on by the presence of iron ore and coal in a seam 30 feet (9 m) thick, the thickest seam in Great Britain, which outcropped in various places.  The first blast furnace recorded in the Black Country was built at West Bromwich in the early 1560s.  Many people had an agricultural smallholding and supplemented their income by working as nailers or smiths, an example of a phenomenon known to economic historians as proto-industrialisation. In 1583, the accounts of the building of Henry VIII’s Nonsuch Palace record that nails were supplied by Reynolde Warde of Dudley at a cost of 11s 4d per thousand.  By the 1620s “Within ten miles [16 km] of Dudley Castle there were 20,000 smiths of all sorts”.

In the early 17th century, Dud Dudley, a natural son of the Baron of Dudley, experimented with making iron using coal rather than charcoal.  Two patents were granted for the process: one in 1621 to Lord Dudley and one in 1638 to Dud Dudley and three others.  In his work Metallum Martis, published in 1665, he claimed to have “made Iron to profit with Pit-cole”.  However, considerable doubt has been cast on this claim by later writers.

An important development in the early 17th century was the introduction of the slitting mill to the Midlands area.  In the Black Country, the establishment of this device was associated with Richard Foley, son of a Dudley nailer, who built a slitting mill near Kinver in 1628.  The slitting mill made it much simpler to produce nail rods from iron bars.

Another development of the early 17th century was the introduction of glass making to the Stourbridge area.  One attraction of the region for glass makers was the local deposits of fireclay, a material suitable for making the pots in which glass was melted.

In 1642 at the start of the Civil War, Charles I failed to capture the two arsenals of Portsmouth and Hull, which although in cities loyal to Parliament were located in counties loyal to him.  As he had failed to capture the arsenals, Charles did not possess any supply of swords, pikes, guns, or shot; all these the Black Country could and did provide. From Stourbridge came shot, from Dudley cannon.  Numerous small forges which then existed on every brook in the north of Worcestershire turned out successive supplies of sword blades and pike heads.  It was said that among the many causes of anger Charles had against Birmingham was that one of the best sword makers of the day, Robert Porter, who manufactured swords in Digbeth, Birmingham, refused at any price to supply swords for “that man of blood” (A Puritan nickname for King Charles), or any of his adherents.  As an offset to this sword-cutler and men like him in Birmingham, the Royalists had among their adherents Dud Dudley, now a Colonel in the Royalist army, who had experience in iron making, and who claimed he could turn out “all sorts of bar iron fit for making of muskets, carbines, and iron for great bolts”, both more cheaply, more speedily and more excellent than could be done in any other way.

In 1712, a Newcomen Engine was constructed near Dudley and used to pump water from coal mines belonging to Lord Dudley.  This is the earliest documented working steam engine.

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