I'm Wednesbury born and bred. This video bought a tear to my eyes. About 9mins in, we helped each other for free. We didn't have money anyway. Yes you didn't rob your neighbours or go shoplifting. The Women being interviewed in the market are some of the amazing people that raised me and made me what I am today. Black Country and proud.
@@user-sc3ts6lf8r sorry, I ignored your comment, I thought you were being sarcastic,lol. In my defence I did fall down the stairs and knocked myself about a bit. I'm sure if Mom and Dad were here they would recognise your Gran, she looks very familiar. I used to hate shopping in Wednesbury with Mom, she seemed to know everyone. It took ages to get it done. Happy Xmas, av a good un.
Filmed in the year I was born, how our landscape has changed. The best of times and the worst, our industry fed the world with innovation and design since Abraham Darby first smelted iron from ore. I'm a Babcock time served welder and learned my trade in Tipton but our industry has sadly gone, successive governments and over zealous unions saw to that. We made the world once but now aged 54 I'm one of the youngest welders I know and the last of our proud generation. So many foundries I welded in are all gone now, housing estates sit where factories once stood... Damn those who sold us out over the years.
What wonderful people these are! My grandfather was a West Virginia coal miner and blacksmith, cut his life short, but he had a huge heart. Tough as a rail tie, yet smiled through it all. Both the Black Country and Appalachia have seen better days but their history is proud with the pulse of raw soul. Great doc, thank you.
A valuable reminder of how brutal heavy industry life was (it still is, of course, in parts of the world). I do miss the camaraderie of our British pubs in those days though. Long gone now.
Saturday night, mum,dad in the pub,dad,Dom’s,mum talking to friends, PIano going packed out,they employed a waiter,2 prices,one for best room and snug,one for tap room,once got a rollicking for buying a pint in tap room, and taking it into the best room happy days
I currently live in Cradley and our local chip shop is called The Chainmakers' and I live in an old terrace like the ones on here. The gardens and houses where I live still have old terraces that were used to make the chains, a part of my house at the back was originally a workshop.
Im american and lived in the west midlands. I’ve even played non-league football in dudley. Brierley Hill. I returned to california but i dont care what anyone says. Black Country’s my second home
During the Great Strike my grandparents (Grandfather worked in a Bilston Foundry) had a piano and were told to sell it by the Union before they'd get any subsistance. My grandmother made my mother a blazer and skirt so she could attend the Grammar school ... cash for the material came from a 'better off' Aunt. Hard times indeed!
when I was very young (70s) My Nana used to live opposite a pub, every night we stayed over, we could hear he piano and singing, usually old war songs. favourites seemed to include "Roll out the barrels" or "while cliffs of Dover". It s a gastro pub now.
Great time capsule. All my family on my mother's side are from West Bromwich, so although I've lived all my life in Birmingham I feel a tremendous attachment to the Black Country.
Proud to be born bred and still living in Quarry Bank , my dad was a stamper in a drop forge, my grandmother worked on a big drilling machine making shackles, hard working , hard living people, no messing about in the 60s " If yo plade up yo got a Quarry Bonk Paling "Greetings from the Black Country ,Happy New Year Everyone
What a special documentary this was. Thank you for posting it. The ladies were sweet, gentle and pleasant to listen to. Heaven help the man who dared fistfight a chainmaker. Enormous arm and upper body strength. Greetings from a former steeltown, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ❤
It is striking that these people look so much healthier and happier than people today, despite the pollution and the poverty, they appear to have some thing that seems to be gone today, a strong sense of identity, and a pride of place. No one looks obese or undernourished or drug addled. The dog and cock fighting is horrible to hear about though.
@@Chris-wytthe NHS was there from 1948. People, especially men, aged quickly through living the life so clearly shown here. Work was hard and often dangerous - as the chain makers showed early in the film. Heavy smoking and drinking will not have helped. We forget the harshness of working class life through the early twentieth century far too quickly.
Many happy memories brought back of visiting my maternal grandparents in Darlaston - lovely picture of the people, the accent, the humour and the hard work and tough lives they had.
I too grew up in the Black Country at Coseley. Went to Mount Pleasant school and then High Arcal in Sedgley. Black Country people are the nicest folk I have ever known in my 72 years - by a distance.
Wow...I was born in the fifties but in the early eighties I used to work at Butlins and every night just before closing time, everyone would head over to 'The Pig and Whistle' for a sing song , songs like 'I am the Piano Man' , the place was heaving and with the singing, the building literally shook ! Great times !
For many years I thought my heritage originated in Wales .Last year I discovered it was actually West Bromwich .It transpired my Great Grandfather stood up against a mine owner after an accident which claimed many lives .He was forced out of town and settled in South Yorkshire..
grey pase and bacon!! i vaguely remember eating this in the wheatsheaf(holdens pub) west brom near carters green, on match day!! around 1979! and it wuz bostin!1
No wonder my grandparents left Dundee in 1919 and came too East London in RSA. Thank you Grandad McCulloch and Nanny. RIP. Glad you not around to see the disaster SA is now since 1994. You would weep.
I was born in Halem hospital West Bromwich, Brought up in Wednesbury until 6years old and thereafter in Tipton. I now live in Wales. It's difficult to explain to people how special Black Country culture has been and how different my childhood has been from other people brought up in other areas. This video has reminded me of all that but I can't help but notice that most people interviewed are talking with their "posh" voice and not he really broad Black Country dialect I remember.
My family are😢 from the Black Country and the Jewellery quarter- I'm so proud of the connections despite growing up in Cheltenham and attending a private school ❤
Ditto! My Gran (born in Smethwick in 1896) finally lived in a flat in one of the new tower blocks shown in the film and could never get over her grandaughter going to private school where we lived on the Isle of Wight. 😊 I’m proud to have family from every one of those towns and villages the narrator mentioned….our ancestors worked on the anvil of the world. Bless them. They were tough.
I bought my first wife's engagement ring (a long time ago) from the Jewellery quarter from a man, my aunty knew, and we bought it via a back door - it was quite cheap but a huge blue sapphire surrounded by diamonds. So probably knocked off eh? My uncle drove car transporters - so everybody got new batteries for their cars... The 'black economy' right?
Yes it was a hard life but they got on with it ,they knew no other way, it was no good moaning unless you where born with the Gentry, it was the way many people had to lived, hard working but proud people.
Superb piece of history 👏👏 born in willenhall the skilled industry that was prevalent in our area has long since gone.My grandparents used to run The Bell in willenhall and my uncle was a lock-maker, so sad the uk has become a dump.An era of respect ladies were ladies gentleman were gentlemen,no stabbings,murders,litter and low life behaviour.
All of that great natural wealth just sitting there under the ground. There are countries that would love to have been so blessed. The ignorance of our political class knows no bounds.
very interesting video. I must confess that as I live in Northamptonshire, I only had a very vague idea of where the black country was, so it was nice to have it's boundaries defined. thankyou for sharing
@MrPercy112 also, this video is about chain making, not glass blowing.. not all glass blowing was done in Brierley Hill was it?. The old one at Amblecote isn't classed as a black county area, it's bordering Wordsley, Stourbridge and Amblecote. The video is about chain making, and it does give borders.
Oh well, if Google says so, then who am I to disagree? Is the ‘Black Country’ only defined by chain-making then? Any road up, I hope you have a good Christmas. 👍
Bilston born a Black Country mon, l have seen horses pulling barges on the cut [canal] and 3 kids drowned in them also. Times when neighbors borrowed a cup of sugar or a shilling for the gas, hard workers and heavy drinking, pawn shops to see you through till payday, in a way good times,
Any one of these characters could've been an uncle or aunt of mine. My mum comes from the Black Country (Smethwick) and she had 12 brothers and sisters (my grandma was blind). When I was little we lived in Coseley as did a number of uncles and aunts. We moved away to WSM but often went back to visit - I was 15 in 1969 - so can remember what these places were like and people such as portrayed here. (Voice over was a bit patronising - probably some Oxbridge bloke who got a job in TV through patronage and had never got his hands dirty.)
I think it's where the term, Hard as nails, and even they get hammered. Comes from. I remember the squalor and the acceptance of the people who never thought things would change so most people ended up drowning their sorrows in beer down the pub whilst the women looked after the kids on very little money. Each relying on others though everyone was in the same boat. Most people would still be living like this if we hadn't voted in a decent Labour government. I've heard of dog fighting and badger baiting but never witnessed it though I've helped as a kid on look out drinking the gambling sessions in the wrenna. I remember hearing about Speka letting someone loose his rot down in the celar when someone bet his old poodle against it. They left them together while they fought it out and after a couple of minutes it went quiet. When they opened the cellar door they were all surprised to find the old poodle walk out and the big dog dead. I do know cockfighting also went on and many people kept chickens some also kept pigs. The people were hard and kept themselves to themselves as there was a lot of thieving and trouble amongst the communities. Everyone lived and survived in poverty. They'd turn in their graves today knowing the others have voted in a war mongering gang of ruthless Neoconservatives.
This is great, thanks for posting this. I'm a Brummie, living in New Zealand. I've got to show this to my wife (she's a Kiwi...addicted to Jaffa cakes and Wotsits!) it will be interesting for her. By the way, I put the captions on, when the 90 years old lady said "furnaces" the caption replaced it with..."penises" 🤣😂🤣 so when good old Phil Drabble started talking about cock fighting that started me laughing again!
I'm a bummie and baggies fan, so that makes me a black country bloke! I'm also in love with NZ, been there twice !?!? Hitch-hiked there in 1992, and used the trains from Aukl and to Invercargill, and cycled all the way back?!!
@@genevievedolan1288I'm from what used to be the "potteries" and I think a phrase will explain it. "Am youm oright" translates as"are you alright". this was an `am yam` someone from the black country I think.
I was in a pub in Bridgnorth some years ago when I heard a woman say to her friend that West Bromwich was in the Black Country, to which I shouted across the pub, "no it ay". Well it was that or "cobblers" 😁. Talk about the tension of a cock fight 🤣. There's many a taan surrounding the real Black Country that every so often, when it suits, or is fashionable, that like to have signs that say something like "Wolverhampton in the Black Countrry", but as the film suggests, real Black Country folk are quite territorial, even if yowm daan another road yowm foreign, so such signs as decribed above are indeed cobblers. Great upload!
@@philhawley1219don powell drummer slade, off stowlawn bilston. jon brookes wednesbury, martin blunt portobello both of indie band the charlatans.
No, integration built Britain. Most of them came from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the North, hence our strange accent. They worked hard together and played hard. My family came from Ireland, but they integrated, I'm not Irish, though I am proud of my roots, I am 100% English and 200% Black Country.
Like Middle English Chaucer language the Canterbury Tales 🎶fascinating video, learnt a great deal re understanding/acceptance Born Portland House 🏰 Wednesbury
I've lived most of my life in the Black country and wouldn't live anywhere else good friendly folks This Country wouldn't be as rich without its Industry making everything
They were dressed in quality material despite their poverty - good wool and cotton - not like the rubbish we wear today - all plastic and polyester that hardly last one wash! We can’t afford wool and quality (not cheap) cotton today despite increased wealth and comfier lifestyles. They were tough, hard-working and grateful for everything they had, despite the fact life was unforgiving. But I hate dog and cock fighting - totally unnecessary - just satisfies the perverted violent senses of men.
Black Country bred... all of this is still there and very vibrant if you go the rite pubs, the working man clubs, black Country family pride, we still av it, when the families gather at Christmas, all the young uns an babies, cousins an uncles, yeh we av a laugh, gray pays an baycun all the way haha
& the government & monarchy stick their nose up at the black country after what the black country contributed to the wealth of the country. God bless & protect the black country & its citizens ❤
The British get trolled for bad teeth but these people’s teeth look good for the most part. Possibly better diets with less sugar. Also no one seems to be obese.
