Black Country | |
---|---|
Region | |
![]() The Black Country in the 1870s | |
Etymology: Effects of industry or coal mining | |
![]() The metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton highlighted within the West Midlands metropolitan county | |
Coordinates: 52°32′N 2°2′W / 52.533°N 2.033°W | |
Country | England |
County | West Midlands |
Historic counties | Staffordshire Worcestershire |
Area | |
• Total | 138 sq mi (360 km2) |
Highest elevation | 889 ft (271 m) |
Population (2012) | |
• Total | 1,146,800[1] |
Demonym | Yam Yam (colloquial) |
The Black Country is an area of England's West Midlands.[2] It is mainly urban, covering most of the Dudley and Sandwell metropolitan boroughs, with the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton sometimes included. The towns of Dudley and Tipton are generally considered to be the centre.[3]
The 14-mile (23 km) road between Wolverhampton and Birmingham was described as "one continuous town" in 1785.[4] The area was one of the Industrial Revolution's birthplaces. Either the 30-foot-thick coal seam close to the surface[5] or the mix of coalworks, cokeworks, ironworks, glassworks, brickworks and steelworks (which produced high levels of soot and air pollution at the time) led to the area's name, which was first recorded in the 1840s.[6]
distinctly
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).The notion of the Black Country, that is to say, a rectangle of territory bounded by Walsall to the north and Smethwick, Halesowen and Stourbridge to the south, is also an anachronism, since the expression cannot be traced back beyond the 1840s