The Black Country has history. There are Anglo-Saxon charters that mention Wolverhampton, Bilston and Wednesfield, Rednal, and Kings Norton. Later the fore-runners of Cradley, Dudley, Smethwick and Halesowen are mentioned in the Domesday Book. The area now known as the Black Country was then a rural border area between administrations and it stayed that way lying as it did on the borders of Mercia and Wessex, and at the edges of the Forest of Arden. When Edward the Elder of Wessex reorganised Western Mercia on defensive grounds as a precaution against the Danelaw established in Eastern Mercia the area he founded it on established towns, normally on rivers to safeguard supplies, so Warwick, Worcester Shrewsbury, Stafford became the County Towns and the area found itself on the boundaries of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. St Peter’s Church in Wolverhampton was endowed by Lady Wulfrun late in the Anglo-Saxon era; the Normans built the Castle at Dudley soon after 1066.
Wolverhampton, Dudley and Walsall all gained their Market Charters in the 1200s and the area was abundant in the raw materials needed for industry. And it was accessible in large quantities – coal, ironstone, limestone, grit and sand, all vital ingredients for iron could be found near the surface. And it had its own character – in the Civil War the Black Country stood for the King under Lord Dudley in opposition to the Parliamentary outlook of neighbouring Birmingham.
In the early centuries much of the coal and limestone workings were used for local consumption. Transport was by horse-and-cart keeping industry small scale. Development was slow to arrive but when it came, it came apace. In 1628 the first slitting mill had been built in Kinver allowing for larger scale production of nails from iron bar. In 1712 the earliest documented (Newcomen) steam engine was pumping the water from mines belonging to Lord Dudley. In 1757 John Wilkinson’s Iron Works at Bradley became the model for many that followed in quick succession. From 1766 Boulton & Watt’s Soho Manufactory in Handsworth pioneered modern mass production techniques and from 1795 their Soho Foundry in Smethwick concentrated on the manufacture of the new improved Watt steam engines. Crucially for the area from 1768 and for the next 70 years James Brindley and then Thomas Telford (amongst others) began to build canals.
The opening of the huge network of waterways (now known as the Birmingham Canal Navigations) between 1770 and 1830 linked the hundreds of individual pits, factories and other businesses to the Rivers Thames, Severn, Mersey and Trent and opened up the area to the World. Raw materials could now be transported in bulk and finished product could be exported anywhere through London, Bristol, Liverpool or Hull. The greatest, most forward-thinking minds in the country gathered here to attend the Lunar Society which met at each full moon between 1765 and 1813 across the area – at Matthew Boulton’s Soho House in Handsworth, in Erasmus Darwin’s house in Lichfield, in Great Barr Hall and elsewhere. The many coffee shops became the early internet cafes where thoughts and ideas percolated together attended by industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals eager to share ideas and look to the future. Outside this a wider more informal group corresponded regularly across the Country – all the World came to the Lunar Society whose ideas not only became the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution but whose principles continued the Age of Enlightenment, questioning the very basis of accepted society and in doing so influenced the American Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution and 100 years later the Russian Revolution. Their ideas sometimes sat uneasily with Government but fundamentally they changed British society for generations.
The coming of the trains took over from canal transport providing speed and greater accessibility. By the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 the Black Country was one of the most industrialised areas in the World, but was also known for its pollution and poor working conditions.
The quality of the product varied enormously from cheap to outstanding but progress was being made everywhere, sometimes in surprising places. Noah Hingley started making cable chain for ships at Cradley in 1820 after receiving an order from a Liverpool shipowner. From 1848 he quickly became extensively engaged in the manufacturing of anchors, anvils, chain and chain cables in Cradley and Netherton on the banks of the Dudley No2 Canal. In 1856, the company was supplying towing chain for use by boats in Europe and in 1857 it was reported that the firm had completed an “immense cable” for the steam ship Adriatic, 40 yards long with each link weighing 50lbs using one of the most powerful hydraulic engines in the Country. By 1863 the firm had 4 blast furnaces in the Dudley District and by the 1880s was producing over 36,000 tons of pig iron, 60,000 tons of finished bar iron and 10,000 tons of anchors and chain per year, employing around 3,000 people. Their Hall’s patent anchor was supplied to the great ocean liners and battleships of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1906, the company made anchors and chain for the ocean liners Lusitania and Mauritania. In August 1910, N. Hingley & Sons completed an anchor for the White Star liner, Olympic – it was claimed that the anchor was the biggest ever produced weighing 15 tons 5¼cwt with length 19ft and width 10ft. Then in 1911, the company manufactured the anchors and chain for the ocean liner Titanic. The largest of the anchors weighed 15.5 tons and on completion was drawn through the streets of Netherton on a wagon drawn by 20 shire horses. The chain and fittings for the anchors weighed around 100 tons. In Mechanical Engineering Richard Tangye had come to Birmingham in 1852 as a clerk in an engineering works but had brought practical experience of engines from his native Cornwall. He started a small business of his own, renting for 4s. a week a workshop in Mount Street. His great opportunity came with the invention of a powerful hydraulic jack, which proved useful in the launching of Telford’s ill-fated Great Eastern and the orders he received as a result meant rapid expansion for his firm in which he was by then partnered by his brothers. Richard himself continued to interest himself in the mechanical engineering side and began the manufacture of Weston’s differential pulley block as well as mechanisms of his own invention, whilst his brother travelled the World in search of orders. In 1864 the Tangyes removed to the neighbourhood of Soho, Smethwick, where they built up the Cornwall Works. Their specialty was the manufacture of machines to very close tolerances for which accurate and detailed drawings were necessary. By 1866 they had their own warehouse in London and a world-wide business.
But Came They All to Birmingham 