There are a number of apocryphal stories claiming to tell how the ‘Black Country’ came to get its name. The most oft repeated is that of Queen Victoria who, traveling between Wolverhampton and Birmingham, is reputed to have required the blinds of her special train to be drawn as she could not stand the sight of “This Black Country”. If true, Victoria not only missed the fact that the train she rode in was a direct consequence of the very industry she chose to despise, but that much of the Black Country was in fact quite green, if a little sooty.

For, despite its reputation, the area to the west of Birmingham, and especially on the industrial fringe in places like Amblecote and Stourbridge was, until startlingly late in the 20th century, remarkably rural. Indeed it was housing and retail development that finally swallowed up the Black Country’s fields, not factories and mines. Amblecote in particular remained largely a district of farms with only the Stour valley area densely populated. On the higher ground to the north and east, farming coexisted with the extraction of coal and clay for centuries. Indeed regular subsidence made building a dangerous proposition in the areas of Amblecote Bank and Wythimoor, leaving agriculture and brick manufacture as the only profitable surface activities. However, Amblecote’s farming came to an abrupt end in the 1960’s, when the entire area between Corbett Hospital and the Delph was turned into a vast open cast coal mine. Old workings were stripped out, and for a decade or more huge piles of earth replaced once green fields.

Now only a few untouched areas of grassy open space remains on the very southern edge of old Amblecote, along with the precious meadow behind Corbett Hospital, all kept under careful scrutiny by developers and conservationists alike.