For my birthday the wife arranged for us to go to The Black Country Museum. We've been a few times before, and it's a great day out, so I was pretty excited because we'd not been for four or five years and they had supposedly built a new 1940's to 1960's section. As we walked through the entrance, we were taken aback by the extensive building work going on. "Where's the metal houses gone?" I said as we looked at boards surrounding a huge building site. "And where have the trams gone?" I complained.
We walked up to the tram shed, and yes, they had a stationary tram outside along with a couple of buses, but they used to have four or five trams along with a wide selection of buses, including a trolley bus that was fun to ride on. Sadly, all the rides were not running. Looking at the rails, the trams had not run for a good few years given how rusty they were!
We went to look at the car collection, at least that was still there! I love this Alvis.
And the quirky motorbike delivery van.
This ambulance was based at the current hospital my daughter is a Nursing Sister at.
Pretty much all the buildings are original and were demolished brick by brick then reassembled at the museum. Some of the houses have actors in them that will tell you all about the property and who lived in them.
(Nice view of the wife's back 😀)
Cup of tea anyone?
The wife didn't seem all that impressed when I said I was planning to get her a washing machine just like this one.
Gone are the days when you'd keep a bacon sandwich out the back.
They do have the beginnings of the 50's - 60's period. My favourite shop is the Radio shop (First on the right). We had some chips from Hobbs & Son, I say "We", the wife basically threw hers away as they were cooked in dripping. 🤢🤮 I ate mine because I was hungry. I have no idea how I kept my chips down though.
There's a funny story attached to that. While in the queue, I could see the wife was not that keen, so I asked if she wanted to leave it and go elsewhere. Now I'm always doing this, and it does annoy her a little bit. It wasn't till we got home and we were telling our daughters about the day when the wife said: "Actually, once we got inside, I thought, oh god! Dripping! I don't want this. But I couldn't say to leave it because I'd just had a go at your dad for suggesting we leave it." 🤯
A Guineas is £105.00, so that would be around £32,769.03 in today's money.
I didn't take pictures of everything. That would be insane. But there is a whole street with shops in including an old pub with actual sawdust on the floor!
A lot of the scenes from the television show Peaky Blinders was filmed at The Black Country Museum, especially around this area with the dock and canal boats.
So much of the exhibits were gone it was a bit upsetting, if truth be told. The victorian fairground was gone, and things like the pump house were closed. We spoke to one of the staff there who said that the plan was to have everything finished by late 2023 early 2024. In our opinion, they should have done it bit by bit, opening up new exhibits as they went along rather than trying to do it all at once. We will go back but probably not until 2025.
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