WALKS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY GREEN BORDER LAND THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES WA L KS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY AND ITS GREEN BORDER-LAND. LICHriKLL) CATIItl'KAI.. WALKS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY ITS GREEN BORDER-LAND. BY ELIHU BURRITT, M.A. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1868. [RIGHT or TRANSLATION RISERVED.] Printed by JosiAH Ai-LEN, jun., Birmingham. PREFA CE. FEW words may be expected from the author of this volume to explain A the reasons of its appearance. A very few will suffice for this object. It is a part of the duty of American Consuls and Consular Agents abroad to prefix or append to their reports of the trade of their respective districts with the United States other facts bearing upon the productive capacities, industrial character, and natural resources of the communities em- braced in their consulates. These annual reports are published by the Department of State at Washington, and constitute a volume of con- siderable value and interest. In preparing such a. report for the Birmingham Consulate, including the Black Country, the author found that it would be impossible to give any approximate idea of the resources and industries of that remarkable district in the space of a few pages 629901 iv Preface. appended to the statistics of its exportations to the United States. On closing his brief abstract at the end of 1866, he therefore proposed and promised to present to the Department at Washington, in the course of the ensuing year, a fuller account of the section included in his consulate. This volume, entitled "Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border -Land," is the fulfilment of that promise and undertaking. In order to make it more readable to those not immediately interested in the elements and indus- tries of Manufactures, Trade, and Commerce, he has introduced somewhat lengthened and detailed notices of natural sceneries, public buildings and characters, and historical facts, incidents, and associations belonging to the section. With such abundant and varied material, several volumes size have been filled but the of equal might ; author hopes this will serve to give distant readers a bird's-eye view of the district of which it treats, and, perhaps, present a few points and aspects of interest which some persons residing within it may have overlooked. Birmingham, April 15, 1868. CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. PXOE INTRODUCTORY ......... I CHAPTER II. Birmingham : its Name, Position, Political History and Men CHAPTER III. The Birmingham Men of Science Inventors Pioneers in the Mechanic Arts Baskerville, Watt, Boulton, Cox, etc. CHAPTER IV. Birmingham Reformers and Artists Rowland Hill and the Penny Post David Cox and his Paintings - 35 CHAPTER V. Distinguished Men of Christian Faith and Philanthropy Joseph Sturge and Rev. John Angell James 46 CHAPTER VI. Institutions and Public Buildings and Public Spirit of Bir- mingham King Edward's School The Town Hall Hospitals, Churches, and Chapels - 67 CHAPTER VII. Rise, Progress, and Characteristics of Mechanical and Manu- facturing Industry in Birmingham Brief Notice of Leading Branches and Establishments 99 CHAPTER VIII. The Black in detail its Country ; Chief Towns and Centres of Industry Dudley, Stourbridge, and Hagley - - 137 vi Contents. CHAPTER IX. PAGE Visits to Iron Manufactories The Brades Works, and their Productions The Wrekin Willenhall - - - 173 CHAPTER X. Brick-making Halesowen Nail Trade Shenstone and The Leasowes - - - 218 CHAPTER XI. Visit to Tong Castle and Church Boscobel and Charles's Oak Chances' Glass-Works - - 242 CHAPTER XII. Enville Gardens: their Relation and Value to the Black Country Wolverhampton : its Historical Monuments and Associations and its Leading Manufactures - - - 292 CHAPTER XIII. The Lickey Hills Redditch, and its Needle and Fish-hook Manufactures Smethwick, Oldbury, Westbromwich, Wednesbury, Tipton, and Walsall, and their Industries Table of Exports of the Black Country to the United States - - - 330 CHAPTER XIV. Visit to a Baronial Hall Wild Cattle of Chartley Lichfield; its Cathedral and Historical Associations Coventry; its History and Industries Kenilworth and its Romantic Reputation Warwick Town and Castle Leamington - 362 CHAPTER XV. Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare; his Fame, Past and Prospective - 439 WALKS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY AND ITS GREEN BORDER-LAND. CHAPTER I. BLACK COUNTRY, black by day: and red by night, cannot be matched, THEfor vast and varied production, by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe. It is a section of Titanic industry, kept in murky perspiration by a sturdy set of Tubal Cains and Vulcans, week in week out, and often seven days to the week. Indeed the Sunday evening halo it wears when the church bells are ringing " to service on winter nights, glows redder than the moon," or like the moon dissolved at its full on the clouds above the roaring furnaces. It is a little dual world of itself, only to be gauged perpendicularly. The better half, it may be, faces B 2 Walks in the Black Country the sun the richer ; but half, averted thence, looks by gaslight towards the central fires. If that sub- terranean half could be for an hour inverted to the sun if its vaults and tortuous ; inky pathways, and all its black-roofed chambers could be but once laid open to the light of day, the spectacle would be a world's wonder, especially if it were uncovered when all the thousands of the subter- ranean road-makers, or the begrimed armies of pickmen, were bending to their work. What a neighing of the pit-horses would come up out of those deep coal-craters at the sight and sense of the sunlight ! What black and dripping forests of timber would be disclosed, brought from all the wild, wooded lands of Norway, Sweden, and Canada, to prop up the rough vaults and sustain the excavated acres undermined by the pick ! Such an unroofing of the smoky, palpitating region would show how soon the subterranean detach- ments of miners and counter-miners must meet, and make a clean sweep of the lower half of that mineral world. For a century or more they have been to this end and the end working ; although has not come yet, one cannot but think that it must be reached ere long. Never was the cellar of a district of equal size stored with richer or more varied treasures. Never a gold-field on the face of the earth, of ten miles radius, produced such vast values as these subterranean acres have and its Green Border-Land. 3 done. To be sure, the nuggets they have yielded to the pick have been black and rough, and blackened and rough men have sent them to the surface. And when they were landed by the noisy and uncouth machinery of the well and windlass, they made no sensation in the men who emptied the tubs, any more than if they were baskets of potatoes. But they yielded gold as bright and rich as ever was mined in Australia or California. Nature did for the ironmasters of the Black all she could Country ; indeed, everything except literally building the furnaces themselves. She brought together all that was needed to set and keep them in blast. The iron ore, coal, and lime the very lining of the furnaces were all deposited close at hand for the operation. Had either two of these elements been dissevered, as they are in some countries, the district would have lost much of its mineral wealth in its utilization. It is not a figure of speech but a geological fact, that in some, if not all, parts of this remarkable region, the coal and lime are packed together in alternate layers in almost the very proportion for the furnace requisite to give the proper flux to the melted iron. Thus Nature has not only put the requisite raw materials side by side, but she has actually mixed them in right pro- portions for use, and even supplied mechanical 4 Walks in tfie Black Country suggestions for going to work to coin these de- posits into a currency better than gold alone to the country. There are no statistics attainable to show the yearly produce of this section, or the wealth it has created. One would be inclined to believe, on seeing the black forest of chimneys smoking over large towns and villages as well as the flayed spaces between, that all the coal and iron mined in the district must be used in it. The furnaces, foundries, and manufactories seem almost countless the vastness and of their ; and variety production infinite. Still, like an ever-flowing river, running through a sandy region that drinks in but part of its waters, there is a stream of raw mineral wealth flowing without bar or break through the absorbing district that produces it, and watering distant counties of England. By night and day, year in year out, century in and century out, runs that stream with unabated flow. Narrow canals filled with water as black as the long sharp boats it floats, crossing each other here and there in the thick of the furnaces, twist out into the green lands in different directions, laden with coal for distant cities and villages. The railways, crossing the canals and their creeping locomotion, dash off with vast loads to London and other great centres of consumption. Tons unnumbered of iron for distant manufactures go and its Green Border-Land. 5 from the district in the same way. And all the while, the furnaces roar and glow by night and day, and the great steam hammers thunder, and hammers from an ounce in weight to a ton, and every kind of machinery invented by man, are ringing, clicking, and whizzing as if tasked to intercept all this raw material of the mines and impress upon it all the labour and skill which human hands could give to it.