I invite you to join me over at Vision and Verb where I talk about meeting up with Ginnie and some Black Country history.

Follow the links to see photographs from the meet-up:

A Spoon Full of Medicine by Astrid

The Whole Gang by brianaw

Birthday Cake for Chris

The Shutterchancers by Ginnie

A Fine Day out by Les

Olde Worlde by Tadpole

Lens Envy by Penny

Street Games by Richard

Group Shot by Tracy

Shutterchance Day Out by Yellow Bear

My weekend has been rather hectic but a lot of fun.

On Saturday night I attended a small birthday gathering to celebrate the 14th birthday party of the daughter of one of my friends.  On arriving at the small village where they live I noticed several men in fluorescent jackets  standing around on street corners.  They had large signs next to them stating in big black letters; Council Worker.  Then I noticed a lorry that was parked up by the side of the road.  On it was a small penguin wiggling about.  Realisation dawned that the carnival must have taken place during the day.  I was almost correct in that thought, the carnival was in fact going to take place that evening.  You have to love the quirkiness of rural villages and  I began to regret not taking my camera along.  But as I watched the sunset fade into dusk before the carnival procession started I didn’t feel so bad about that, it was now too dark for photographs.

The floats were all excellent and the carnival parade was a good start for a birthday get together.  After the procession had finished we returned to the house for a buffet, wine and a large slice of birthday cake that had been made by one of the other guests.  Luckily, after such a lot of cake, the Wii emerged (as it tends to do on these occasions).  When we all finally left for the evening I was told that my Wii bowling was awesome…

Sunday morning arrived rather too quickly because I had an earlier start than is usual in order to visit the Black Country Museum.  A few days ago I had noticed that Ginnie, from Vision and Verb, was coming to England for a few days and had arranged a meet up with friends  who blog at Shutterchance.  The Black Country  Museum, where the meet up was to take place, isn’t too far away from where I live.  I had left her a comment to say I would try and meet up with her there.

The weather started off quite grey and mizzley but turned to glorious sunshine in the afternoon.  After a slight mix up with the exact meeting place I managed to find Ginnie, Astrid and the Shutterchancers, none of whom I had met previously.  It was lovely to meet  Ginnie,  Astrid and the other Shutterchancers and to spend a couple of enjoyable hours exploring the museum together and especially nice to meet up with a blog friend and get to know each other in person.

That was everything that was planned for the weekend until my brother phoned at the last minute, hoping to meet up on Sunday.  So following the museum visit, we had a family get together which involved food and wine in a local pub.  Another good time was had by all.

I was struggling for for inspiration for this theme, when I suddenly remembered that there was lots of music at the Women’s Chainmakers festival that I attended in September.  We didn’t stay for all the music but this barbershop quartet were very good and also amusing.

There was also a brass band to lead the celebratory march and display of banners that took place around the Black Country museum.

For more of this weeks PhotoHunt pictures check out tnchick.

Fairgrounds were as much a part of Black Country life as rolling mills, mines and trams. The collection of rides and amusements at the Museum accurately portray the Black Country travelling fairs of the first decades of the last century.

The small traditional fairground might have been operated by one of the many well-known travelling families who were based in the region.

The round stalls, swings, mirrors and coconut sheet are all authentic examples which would have been set up by fairground proprietors when the fair came to town for a few days.

Dating from around 1910, the Brooklyn Cakewalk is one of the few remaining in use, and along with the Swingboats and Helter-Skelter creates a really nostalgic experience.

The Ark was the latest thing in high-speed rides when introduced in the 1920s and the magnificent paintwork and silent running of the 1930’s Lakin built four lift Speedway Ark make a superb centrepiece to the historic fairground.

Since its creation in 1983, the ‘Old Tyme’ fair at the Black Country Living Museum has been operated by the third and fourth generation of the famous Jones family of Cradley Heath who started travelling with the fairs in the early 1900s.

The area around the canal was quite photogenic and I couldn’t resist taking some photographs of it, when I was at the museum on Saturday.  The picture below depicts a set of limekilns that were originally built in 1842.  The small building with the sign over the top is a glass cutters workshop.

Quarried extensively in Sedgley, Dudley and Walsall, limestone was one of the great wealth of raw materials that contributed to the successful industrial development of the Black Country. It was used in iron making as a flux in the furnaces but could also be converted to lime by burning.

‘Quicklime’ was used to make mortar and plaster for the building trade, in agriculture as a fertiliser and as ’slaked’ lime for making whitewash.

The large set of kilns overlooking the village were built in 1842 and were in use until about 1926, burning limestone excavated from nearby Castle Hill and Wren’s Nest. Twenty-eight feet high chimneys topped the shafts of the kilns and belched out smoke and fumes continuously.

The lime works and canal basin were once at the hub of industrial activity within the Black Country.

The canal arm was built from the main Wolverhampton-Birmingham line especially to serve these kilns.

Earlier ‘horseshoe’ and ’shaft’ kilns were built near the entrance to Dudley Canal Tunnel.

The underground canals were built in the late eighteenth century to carry stone from the mines and were linked into the Midlands canal network.

The two most prominent buildings in the following picture are the rolling mill to the left of the picture.

The rolling mill depicts a typical Black Country hand rolling mill in which iron and later, steel bars were reduced in size or changed in section.

The iron bars are heated up in the cast iron furnace and then passed through the mill stands several times to reduce the size of the section.

It was installed at Birchley Rolling Mills, Oldbury in 1923 using second hand parts and has been reconstructed at the Museum as it would have appeared around 1900.

When in operation the mill is now driven by a modern electrical motor.

And the anchor forge to the right of the picture.

The open-sided shed standing in the middle of the ironworks is the anchor forge which was rescued from Isiah Preston’s in Cradley Heath.

The steam-hammer was installed second hand in the 1920s to forge parts for ships’ anchors and the other equipment including furnace and boiler also came from Prestons.

The building was saved from Johnson’s Rolling Mill site in West Bromwich.

The iron billets are heated in the furnace and suspended from a crane in order that they can be manipulated beneath the steam powered hammer.

The heat from the furnace also raises steam in the boiler between the furnace and the chimney and this steam powers the hammer which reduces the size of the iron and forges it into the shape required.

In 1910 the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath fought a successful 10 week dispute to establish a minimum wage for their labour. The dispute was led by union organiser and campaigner Mary MacArthur. By the end of the dispute the women chainmakers had managed to increase their earnings from 5 shillings (25p) to 11 shillings (55p). The victory helped to make the possibility of a national minimum wage a reality.

Women chainmakers were a good example of ’sweated labour’ meaning hours of toil for minimum wages. The women chainmakers’ pamphlet, which gives extensive information about the dispute, quotes the following about the working conditions of chainmakers:

Author Robert Harborough Sherard visited Cradley Heath to collect evidence for one of a series of articles, later published as a book ‘The White Slaves of England’ (1898), on the sweated trades of the land. He was taken by James Smith, secretary of the Chainmakers’ Union, to a place called Anvil Yard. Sherard Wrote:

“Two of the girls working in the shed were suckling babes and could work but slowly. Those who could work at their best being unencumbered could make a hundredweight of chain in two and a half days. Their owner walked serene and grey-haired among them, checking conversation, and being, at times, abusive. She was but one of a numerous class of human leeches fast to a gangrened sore.

Of Anvil Yard, with its open sewers and filth and shame, one would rather not write, nor of the haggard tatterdermalions* who groaned and jumped. In fact I hardly saw them, the name ‘Anvil Yard’ had set me thinking of some lines of Goethe, in which he deplores the condition of the people – ‘zwischen dem Amboss und Hammer’ – between the anvil and the hammer.

And as these lines went through my head, whilst before my spiritual eyes there passed the pale procession of the White Slaves of England, I could see nothing but sorrow and hunger and grime, rags, foul food, open sores and movements incessant, instinctive yet laborious – and anvil and a hammer ever descending – all vague, and in a mist as yet untinged with red, a spectacle so hideous that I gladly shut it out, wondering for my part, what in these things is right.”

*tatterdermalion – a poor and ragged person

The PCS Midlands office had a stall in the Leftfield tent, so there was a chance for me to meet up with friends old and new.  It was also a great opportunity to explore the museum and give my camera an airing.

Throughout the day re-enactments of the struggle and dispute took place in the reconstructed town at the museum. These were followed by a march through the museum streets which was accompanied by marching bands and led by the costumed theatre group.  This gave my friends and other trade unionists that were attending the event, the opportunity to join the march and display their branch and regional banners.  At the end of the march a member of the theatre group read one of Mary MacArthur’s speeches to the crowd that had congregated during the march.

This was originally posted over at Nourishing Obscurity, the eagle eyed might notice that I have altered this version slightly to add a personal flavour. I will be posting more pictures of the day on my blog in due course, but if you want a sneaky preview of them all you can check here.