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The Black Country Living Museum is located in the English West Midlands and celebrates the incredible industrial heritage of the area that once made the proud boast of being ‘the workshop of the world’. Steel making, coal mining, chain-making, forging and a myriad of other industries once prospered in this area and employed tens of thousands of people. The Industrial cloud that lingered over the area, combined with the slag heaps gave rise to the nick-name the area bares to this day…’The Black Country’. Amongst those myriad of industries was the manufacture of motorcycles and some proud names hailed from the streets of Wolverhampton, Dudley etc…most notably Sunbeam and AJS to name but two. I visited the museum last week and here are few pictures with a focus on classic bikes from the area…
The museum has reconstructed a street from the area on site, and this motorcycle shop is included in the period row…if only we had a time machine and could go back to these simpler times
The shop is open, but you can’t buy anything…they wouldn’t even give me a quote to service my Ducati…muttered something about ‘foreign rubbish’…
Locally produced AJS proudly on display in the window. Hard to swallow that this proud name is now used on 125 produced in China
Sunbeam, another famous local brand, also on display in the window of the shop
Further around the site is a replica of the garage run by A W Broome. He was a race mechanic for the legendary Sunbeam racing and record breaking motorcycle teams. He ran a garage in the area for many years
Sunbeam motorcycles of the era in which he did his best work
This magnificent, steam powered carousel was also on display as part of a fully functioning fun fair….get some classic biking action in without any oil leaks!
A re-creation of big local car and motorcycle dealers has also been constructed on site and this is used to house a large collection of cars and motorcycles associated with the area, The bus is a GUY by the way. made in nearby Wolverhampton
Some of the stunning exhibitsThe museum has so much more to offer if you are into your history and industrial heritage in particular. Full streets, removed from their original locations, moved to the museum where they have been painstakingly rebuilt and restored to their prime. It has recently risen to prominence as the set for many scenes of the BBC drama ‘Peaky Blinders’ too. A functioning fish and chip shop (really delicious!!) and you can even get a proper pint in a real pub in front of a roaring coal fire. It is a fabulous place and well worth a visit.
More info here:
https://www.bclm.co.uk/Facebook here
https://www.facebook.com/bclivingmuseum/AJS Motorcycles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJSSunbeam Motorcycles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunbeam_CyclesGUY Motors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_MotorsThe Black Country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_CountryPeaky Blinders:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045fz8rhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaky_Blinders_(TV_series)
some cool bikes dude
Really interesting place.
Be a great location for one of your Vlogs, it really would.
I linked my blog to their FB page and got this pleasing feedback…
Famously getting featured on a certain BBC drama
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