Kelly

Black Country Living Museum | Dudley

I had been bugging Craig for ages to get a visit to the Black Country Living Museum booked in, we finally visited recently.

I wanted to start by saying yes I know Peaky Blinders was filmed here, no I have not seen any of it so when the staff kept making peaky blinders references I just looked at them like a deer in the headlights. I have however watched WPC56 and I did recognise some of the buildings.

Black country living museum is an open air museum with real historic buildings that have been rebuilt in the museum. (Just like Beamish) Based in the West Midlands, built on former industrial land with real Limekilns, Canals and coal pits. All set out on 26 acres.

You can see things such as:

Kilns, Coal Mine, Railway Yard, Play area, Fairground, Pubs, Shops, Canal, Bakery, Sweetshop, 1920s Cinema, Horses, Blacksmith, Ironworks, Brickmaking, School with lessons, Vintage vehicles and so much more. Expect to learn about the heritage and lives of the local people. It is a fantastic museum and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We can't wait to re visit and even visit some of the evening events as they sound fab too.

Our visit

We arrived for 10am and found a parking space, which was pretty easy as it is a fairly large car park plus we have a blue badge. Parking is £3.50 and you collect a token on the way out of the museum.

We then entered the main building which houses a restaurant, gift shop, toilets and then the ticketing desks, accessed either by stairs or lift.

We had pre booked our tickets so it was a case of just scanning the email code which was super easy. Armed with a map we set off into the museum.

We basically just followed the loop and worked our way in and out of the buildings. We didn't go down the mines but I did notice they were doing tours throughout the day. We made sure to visit each thing because we didn't want to miss anything out.

The attention to detail is second to none with staff in costume and characters fitting to the time period and what they were doing. Elliot loved the bobby who was fantastic and at times looked like a wax work when he was stood still. The co-op shop was fantastic and we really enjoyed the shopping challenge. Being on rations must have been so difficult.

We really enjoyed experiencing the 1920s cinema which showed a Laurel & Hardy movie lasting roughly 20 minutes.

There are lots of activities to get involved in and lots of demos, we actually found the brick making demo interesting.

There are over 81 things listed on the site map to look at and the museum has over 100,000 items in the archives which is really impressive.

You can even see vintage cars being restored and look at the ones that have lovingly been restored complete with a detailed write up.

There is a sweet shop but if you are a Beamish regular you will be disappointed because it is no where near as good as that one. The only bad experience we had was in the chippy. The staff were rude to customers. (think Karen's Diner in the 50's) In the gift shop there were no guide books which was a bit disappointing as we collect them from attractions.