Bibliography: Black Country History

This is an ongoing project to create a useful bibliography of Black Country history. So far I’ve limited it to secondary sources and only “academic” texts – published with a degree of peer review, fully footnoted, etc. This is not to draw an artificial distinction between “popular” and “academic” (I disagree with this completely!); mostly it’s to do with the scale of what I think I can achieve! I hope that this acts as a point of reference for undergraduate essays, postgraduate research, or anything else. Many of these will thus be behind a publisher’s paywall, and I can only suggest some sort of revolution to try and overturn this.

These criteria also means that many very worthy books and articles are not included: Edward Chitham‘s town histories, or Ned Williams’ many excellent books (which can all be found here), for instance. This is a project for the future! In the meantime, you are strongly recommended to visit the excellent libraries at your borough archives (Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Sandwell, with their searchable catalogue at BlackCountryHistory.org) and at the Black Country Living Museum. I also recommend the Blackcountryman, the organ of the Black Country Society, which features articles of very high quality about the Black Country in every issue. All past issues are available as PDFs for a very reasonable membership fee.

This is only a very basic list – the easiest way to search is to use your browser’s “find in page” feature (try Ctrl-F). I am convinced there are many texts I have missed, so this is an ongoing project – please comment or email me with suggestions to be added. All references here are in Chicago style.

Note on general histories of the Black Country
The Black Country has not received a full, academic historical survey (within the parameters I’m using here) in modern times. That’s not to say that there aren’t good histories available; but this unique, characterful region seems to spawn highly personal, emotive versions which make wonderful reads but can’t claim to be exhaustive, representative or, in my view at least, authoritative. With that caveat, the following are recommended:

  • Jones, J. Wilson. The History of the Black Country. Cornish Bros., 1950.
  • Drabble, Phil. The Black Country. London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1952.
  • Chitham, Edward. The Black Country. Amberley Publishing Limited, 1972 (republished 2009).
  • Dick, Malcolm, David J. Eveleigh, and Janet Sullivan. The Black Country: A History in 100 Objects. Dudley: Black Country Living Museum Publications, 2019.
Contents

Pre-modern and Archaeology

  • Arnold, Alison, and Robert Howard. Halesowen Abbey, Dudley, West Midlands : Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers. Research Department Report Series (English Heritage. Research Dept.), 90-2008. Portsmouth: English Heritage, 2008.
  • Baker, N. J. ‘The Gatehouse of Rushall Hall, Staffs. : A Survey and Excavation’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 23 (1983): 79–99.
  • Baugh, G.C., W.L. Cowie, J.C. Dickinson, A.P. Duggan, A.K.B. Evans, R.H. Evans, Una C. Hannam, et al. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 2. London: Victoria County History, 1967.
  • Belford, Paul. ‘Five Centuries of Iron Working: Excavations at Wednesbury Forge’. Post-Medieval Archaeology 44, no. 1 (1 June 2010): 1–53.
  • Boland, Peter, and Paul Collins. ‘A Strategy for Industrial Archaeology in the Black Country’. Industrial Archaeology Review 16, no. 2 (1 March 1994): 157–69.
  • Brown, K. F. ‘Two Walsall Charters, 1 : The Charter of William Ruffus to the Burgesses of Walsall; 2 : Walsall Borough Charter, 1309’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 17 (for 1975 1977): 65–73.
  • Cantor, Leonard Martin. The Medieval Parks of South Staffordshire. Birmingham Archaeological Society, 1965.
  • Dungworth, David. ‘The Possible Water-Powered Bloomery at Goscote (Rushall), Walsall, West Midlands’. Historical Metallurgy 44, no. 1 (n.d.): 15–20.
  • Edgeworth, Matt. ‘Excavating a Taskscape, Flowscape and Ceramiscene in the Black Country’. In Forms of Dwelling: 20 Years of Taskscapes in Archaeology, 252–67. Oxford: Oxbow, 2017.
  • Gould, Jim. ‘Observations at Aldridge Church, Staffs.’ Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 18 (1977): 47–52.
  • ———. ‘Walsall – in the Beginning’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 24 (1984): 1–7.
  • Goulds, Jim. ‘Settlement and Farming in the Parish of Aldridge (West Midlands) Prior to 1650’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 20 (1978): 41–56.
  • Hewitson, Christopher, Eleanor Ramsey, Malcolm Hislop, and Michael Shaw. The Great Hall, Wolverhampton: Elizabethan Mansion to Victorian Workshop: Archaeological Investigations at Old Hall Street, Wolverhampton, 2000-2007. Vol. 5. British Archaeological Reports Ltd, 2010.
  • Hislop, Malcolm. ‘Bilston: The Archaeology of a West Midlands Community’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 41 (2006): 45–59.
  • Hodder, M. A. ‘Excavations in Oldbury Town Centre, 1967, 1987 and 1988 : The Medieval and Early Post-Medieval Settlement’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 13 (1992): 173–80.
  • ———. ‘Excavations in Wednesbury, 1988 and 1989 : The Medieval and Post-Medieval Settlement, and the 17th-Century Pottery Industry’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 32 (1992): 96–115.
  • Hodder, M. A., and J. M. Glazebrook. ‘Excavations at Oakeswell Hall, Wednesbury, 1983’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 27 (1992): 64–77.
  • Hodder, M.A. ‘Excavations in the Town Centre of Oldbury, Worcs.’ Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 1 (1968): 79.
  • Hooke, Della. England’s Landscape. Vol. 6, The West Midlands. London: Collins, 2006.
  • Hunt, John. Lordship and the Landscape: A Documentary and Archaeological Study of the Honor of Dudley c. 1066-1322. British Archaeological Reports. London: J. and E. Hedges, 1997.
  • James, Kevin. ‘The Swinford Charter (S579) : A More Complex Origin for Oldswinford?’ Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 24 (2014): 121–40.
  • Jenkins, Rhŷs. ‘The Oliver: Ironmaking in the Fourteenth Century’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 12 (1933): 9–14.
  • Jones, Stanley R. ‘Shelfield Lodge Farm, Aldridge, Staffordshire : An Altered Hall-House of Medieval Date’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 10 (1969): 63–69.
  • ———. ‘West Bromwich (Staffs.) Manor House’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 17 (1977): 1–63.
  • Jones, Stanley R., and V. F. Penn. ‘A Medieval Cruck-Trussed House in High Street, Aldridge, Staffs’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 18 (1977): 1–23.
  • Larkham, Peter J. ‘Moated Sites in South Staffordshire’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 24 (for 1982 1984): 8–65.
  • Mander, G. P., and N. W. Tildesley. A History of Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton County Borough, 1960.
  • Meaney, A. L. ‘Woden in England: A Reconsideration of the Evidence’. Folklore 77, no. 2 (1 June 1966): 105–15.
  • Meeson, Bob. ‘Time and Place: Medieval Carpentry in Staffordshire’. Vernacular Architecture 27, no. 1 (1 June 1996): 10–27.
  • Molyneux, Nicholas. ‘A Late Thirteenth-Century Building at Halesowen Abbey’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 9 (1984): 45–53.
  • Morgan, Philip Joseph. ‘A Prose Narrative of the Lords of Rushall in John Harpur’s Psalter’. In Much Heaving and Shoving: Late-Medieval Gentry and Their Concerns; Essays for Colin Richmond, edited by Margaret Aston and Rosemary Horrox, 24–34. Chipping Norton: Aston & Horrox, 2005.
  • Penn, V. G. ‘Lower Farm, Bloxwich, Staffs. : A Cruck-Truss House’. Transactions, Lichfield & South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 5 (for 1963 1964): 69–73.
  • Ramsey, Eleanor. ‘Virtual Wolverhampton: Recreating the Historic City in Virtual Reality’. International Journal of Architectural Research 11, no. 3 (22 November 2017): 42.
    Razi, Zvi. Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270-1400. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
  • ———. ‘The Myth of the Immutable English Family’. Past & Present 140 (1993): 3–44.
  • ———. ‘The Struggles between the Abbots of Halesowen and Their Tenants in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’. In Social Relations and Ideas: Essays in Honour of R. H. Hilton, edited by T.H. Aston, P.R. Coss, Christopher Hill, and Joan Thirsk, 154–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  • Rix, Michael M. ‘The Wolverhampton Cross-Shaft’. Archaeological Journal 117, no. 1 (1 January 1960): 71–81.
  • Rowse, Dorothea. ‘Sir William Rufus of Walsall and His Family’. Foundations: Newsletter of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy 2, no. 4 (2007): 219–27.
  • Swanson, Robert Norman. ‘A Medieval Staffordshire Fraternity : The Guild of St John the Baptist, Walsall’. In Staffordshire Histories : Essays in Honour of Michael Greenslade. Ed. Phillips, A. D. M.; Morgan, Philip Joseph, 47–65. Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 4th Ser., 19. Keele: Staffordshire Record Society, 1999.
  • Thomas, Richard, Matt Law, Emma Browning, Alistair Hill, and Rachel Small. ‘The Changing Exploitation of Oysters (Ostrea Edulis L. 1758) in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: A Case Study from Dudley Castle, West Midlands’. Environmental Archaeology 0, no. 0 (24 January 2019): 1–14.
  • Thurlby, M. ‘A Note on the Form of a Barrel Vault in the Chair of St. John the Baptist at Halesowen and Its Place in English Romanesque Architecture’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society Worcester 9 (1984).
  • Upton, Chris. A History of Wolverhampton. Chichester: Phillimore, 2007.
  • Whiston, J. W. ‘An Earlier South Staffordshire Archaeological Society’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 18 (1977): 91–92.
  • ———. ‘The Rushall Psalter’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 23 (1983): 89–91.
  • Willis-Bund, J.W., ed. The Victoria County History of Worcester. Vol. 3. London: Victoria County History, 1913. 
  • Wrathmell, Stuart, and Susan Wrathmell. ‘Excavations at the Moat Site, Walsall, 1975’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 18 (for 1976 1977): 29–45.
  • ———. ‘Excavations at the Moat Site, Walsall, Staffs. 1972-4’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 16 (for 1974 1976): 19–53.
  • ———. ‘Excavations in Lower Rushall Street, Walsall, Staffs, 1975’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 23 (for 1981-82 1983): 100–108.
The early modern Black Country
  • Buchanan, K.M. ‘Localisation of the Seventeenth-Century Worcestershire Industry’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, New Series, 17–20 (1943 1940).
  • Court, W. H. B. Rise of Midland Industries, 1600-1838. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.
  • Ede, John F. History of Wednesbury. Wednesbury: Simmons Publishing, 1962.
  • Evans, Chris. ‘A Skilled Workforce during the Transition to Industrial Society: Forgemen in the British Iron Trade, 1500-1850’. Labour History Review 63, no. 2 (July 1998): 143–59.
  • Palfrey, H.L. ‘The Foleys of Stourbridge’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 21 (1944).
  • Frost, Pauline. ‘Yeomen and Metalsmiths: Livestock in the Dual Economy in South Staffordshire 1560–1720’. The Agricultural History Review 29, no. 1 (1981): 29–41.
  • Greener, James. ‘Stourbridge and Steam’. The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 87, no. 2 (3 July 2017): 236–58.
  • Greenslade, M. W. Catholic Staffordshire 1500-1850. Leominster: Gracewing, 2006.
  • Guttery, D.R. ‘Stourbridge Market in Tudor Times’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 28 (1952).
  • Hunt, John. ‘Families at War: Royalists and Montfortians in the West Midlands’. Midland History 22, no. 1 (1 June 1997): 1–34.
  • Jenkins, W. J. ‘The Early History of Coal-Mining in the Black Country and Especially around Dudley’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 8, no. 1 (1 January 1927): 107–12.
  • Johnson, D. A. ‘’Johnson Is Beaten!’ : A Case of “Rough Music” at West Bromwich in 1611’. Transactions, Lichfield & South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 25 (1985): 31–34.
  • King, Peter Wickham. ‘Black Country Mining before the Industrial Revolution’. Mining History 16, no. 1 (2007): 42–3.
  • ———. ‘Dud Dudley’s Contribution to Metallurgy’. Historical Metallurgy 36, no.1, 2002, 43
  • ———. ‘The Development of the Iron Industry in South Staffordshire in the 17th Century : History and Myth’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 38 (1996): 59–78.
  • Locock, Martin. ‘The Development of the Building Trades in the West Midlands, 1400-1850’. Construction History, 1992, 3–19.
  • Lones, T. E. ‘A Précis of Mettallum Martis and an Analysis of Dud Dudley’s Alleged Invention’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 20, no. 1 (1 January 1939): 17–28.
  • Mander, G. P., and N. W. Tildesley. A History of Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton County Borough, 1960.
  • Morton, G. R., and Joyce Wingrove. ‘Metallurgical Considerations of Early Bloomeries in South Staffordshire’. Transactions, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 11 (for 1969-70 1971): 64–66.
  • Palfrey, H. E. ‘Early Stourbridge Industries’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 8, no. 1 (1 January 1927): 99–106.
  • Rowlands, Marie B. English Catholics of Parish and Town, 1558-1778: A Joint Research Project of the Catholic Record Society and Wolverhampton University. Vol. 5. Catholic Record Society, 1999.
  • ———. ‘Industrialisation and Social Change in the West Midlands 1560-1760’. In The Onset of Industrialisation : Papers Presented at a Conference on the Teaching of Regional and Local History in Universities and Colleges, Held at Nottingham University, December, 1976., edited by Marilyn Palmer, 28–37. Nottingham, 1976.
  • ———. ‘Industry and Social Change in Staffordshire, 1660-1760 : A Study of the Probate and Other Records of Tradesmen’. Transactions, Lichfield & South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 9 (for 1967 1968): 37–58.
  • ———. ‘“Rome’s Snaky Brood”: Catholic Yeomen, Craftsmen and Townsmen in the West Midlands, 1600–1641’. British Catholic History 24, no. 2 (October 1998): 147–65.
  • ———. ‘Society and Industry in the West Midlands at the End of the Seventeenth Century’. Midland History 4, no. 1 (1 January 1977): 48–60.
  • ———. ‘Two 17th Century Ironmongers’. West Midlands Studies 7 (1974): 18–22.
  • ———. ‘The Allegiances and Loyalties of Three Catholic Priests in the Late Seventeenth Century’. Midland History 25, no. 1 (1 June 2000): 78–97.
  • Stuart, D. G. ‘The Burial-Grounds of the Society of Friends in Staffordshire’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 12 (1971): 37–48.
  • Upton, Chris. A History of Wolverhampton. Chichester: Phillimore, 2007.
  • Willis-Bund, J.W., ed. The Victoria County History of Worcester. Vol. 3. London: Victoria County History, 1913. 
  • Wisker, R. F. ‘The Estates of James Leveson of Wolverhampton (d. 1547)’. Staffordshire Archeological Transactions 37 (1998): 120.
The Black Country in the 18th Century
  • Allen, John S. ‘John Fidoe’s 1727 Newcomen Engine at Wednesbury, Staffs.’ Transactions of the Newcomen Society 36 (1966): 149–52.
  • ———. ‘The “Dudley Castle”, 1712, Newcomen Engine Replica, Black Country Museum, Dudley, West Midlands’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 69, no. 2 (1998): 283–97.
  • ———. ‘The Newcomen Engine and Coalworks at The Hayes, Lye, Stourbridge, 1760-69’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 36, no. 1 (1 January 1963): 153–57.
  • Allen, John S., and Julia M. H. Elton. ‘Edward Short and the 1714 Newcomen Engine at Bilston, Staffs’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 74, no. 2 (2004): 281–91.
  • Andrew, J. H., and John S. Allen. ‘A Confirmation of the Location of the 1712 “Dudley Castle” Newcomen Engine at Coneygree, Tipton’. International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 79, no. 2 (2009): 174–82.
  • Andrew, James H. ‘The Canal at Smethwick — under, over and Finally through the High Ground’. Industrial Archaeology Review 17, no. 2 (1 April 1995): 171–92.
  • ———. ‘The Costs of Eighteenth Century Steam Engines’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 66, no. 1 (1 January 1994): 77–95.
  • ———. ‘The Documentary History of the Smethwick Engine’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 57, no. 1 (1 January 1985): 1–18.
  • ———. ‘The Smethwick Engine’. Industrial Archaeology Review 8, no. 1 (1 November 1985): 7–27.
  • Barnsby, George J. A History of Housing in Wolverhampton, 1750 to 1975. Wolverhampton: Integrated Publishing Services, 1975.
  • ———. The Working Class Movement in the Black Country, 1750 to 1867. Wolverhampton, 1977.
  • Baugh, G.C., W.L. Cowie, J.C. Dickinson, A.P. Duggan, A.K.B. Evans, R.H. Evans, Una C. Hannam, et al. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 3. London: Victoria County History, 1970..
  • ———. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 17. London: Victoria County History, 1976.
  • ———. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 20. London: Victoria County History, 1984.
  • Benoy, Kimberley. ‘Taking Account of Our Past : Cataloguing the Smith, Son & Wilkie Chartered Accountants Collection’. Business Archives 106 (2013): 1–16.
  • Benton, E. ‘The Bilston Enamellers’. Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle 4, no. 3 (1971).
  • Brown, David. ‘The Industrial Revolution, Political Economy and the British Aristocracy: The Second Viscount Dudley and Ward as an Eighteenth-Century Canal Promoter’. The Journal of Transport History 27, no. 1 (1 March 2006): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.7227/TJTH.27.1.3.
  • Chaloner, William Henry. ‘John Wilkinson, Ironmaster’. History Today 1, no. 5 (1951): 63–69.
  • Church, Roy A. Kenricks in Hardware: A Family Business, 1791-1966. London: David & Charles, 1969.
  • Coley, N. G. ‘James Keir : Soldier, Chemist and Gentleman’. West Midlands Studies 4 (1970): 1–22.
  • Court, W. H. B. Rise of Midland Industries, 1600-1838. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.
  • ———. ‘Industrial Organisation and Economic Progress in the Eighteenth-Century Midlands’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Fifth Series), 4th Series, 27 (1946).
  • Ede, John F. History of Wednesbury. Wednesbury: Simmons Publishing, 1962.
  • Evans, Chris. ‘A Skilled Workforce during the Transition to Industrial Society: Forgemen in the British Iron Trade, 1500-1850’. Labour History Review 63, no. 2 (July 1998): 143–59.
  • Every, George. ‘The Catholic Community in Walsall 1720–1824’. British Catholic History 19, no. 3 (1989): 313–31.
  • Gale, W. K. V. ‘Early Iron Founding in the Midlands’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 28 (1956): 225–31.
  • ———. ‘Handwrought Chains’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 29 (1958): 195–204.
  • ———. ‘Notes on the Black Country Iron Trade’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 24, no. 1 (1 January 1943): 13–26.
  • ———. ‘Some Workshop Tools from Soho Foundry, Birmingham’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 23 (1948): 67–69.
  • Gale, W.K.V. The Black Country Iron Industry: A Technical History. Iron & Steel Institute, 1966.
  • Gallagher, Christopher. ‘The Leasowes: A History of the Landscape’. Garden History 24, no. 2 (1996): 201–20.
  • Goodwin, Charles H. ‘Vile or Reviled? The Causes of the Anti-Methodist Riots at Wednesbury between May, 1743 and April, 1744 in the Light of New England Revivalism’. Methodist History 35, no. 1 (1 October 1996): 14+.
  • John Grayson, ‘South Staffordshire Enamel – HOW… Did They Make That? The Value of Contemporary Craftsmanship in Revealing (Absent) 18th Century Metalworking Skills in Literary Sources’, Making Futures 5 (2018).
  • Greener, James. ‘Stourbridge and Steam’. The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 87, no. 2 (3 July 2017): 236–58.
  • Greener, James. ‘The First and Third Engines’. The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 88, no. 1 (2 January 2018): 80–111.
  • Greenslade, M. W. Catholic Staffordshire 1500-1850. Leominster: Gracewing, 2006.
  • Greenslade, M. W., and D. G. Stuart. A History of Staffordshire. 3rd ed. Chichester: Phillimore, 1998.
  • Henderson, W. O. ‘Wolverhampton as the Site of the First Newcomen Engine’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 26, no. 1 (1 January 1947): 155–59.
  • Hewitson, Christopher, Eleanor Ramsey, Malcolm Hislop, and Michael Shaw. The Great Hall, Wolverhampton: Elizabethan Mansion to Victorian Workshop: Archaeological Investigations at Old Hall Street, Wolverhampton, 2000-2007. Vol. 5. British Archaeological Reports Ltd, 2010.
  • Jenkins, Rhys. ‘Stourbridge and Dudley: A Sketch of the Industrial History of the District’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 8, no. 1 (1 January 1927): 113–16.
  • Jones, Edgar. A History of GKN Vol 1: Innovation and Enterprise, 1759–1918. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987.
  • Jones, Peter. ‘Industrial Enlightenment in Practice: Visitors to the Soho Manufactory, 1765-1820’. Midland History 33, no. 1 (2008): 68–96.
  • Lamb, R. P. H. ‘The Newcomen Engine and the Account Book of Edward Short – a Detailed Reappraisal’. British Mining 86 (2008): 122–46.
  • Locock, Martin. ‘The Development of the Building Trades in the West Midlands, 1400-1850’. Construction History, 1992, 3–19.
  • Lones, T. E. ‘The South Staffordshire and North Worcester-Shire Mining District and Its Relics of Mining Appliances’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 11, no. 1 (1 January 1930): 42–54.
  • Lorenz, Andrew. GKN: The Making of a Business, 1759 – 2009. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
  • King, Peter. ‘George Sparrow, Coalmaster, and Early Steam Engines’. The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 87, no. 2 (20 June 2018): 1–9.
  • Mander, G. P., and N. W. Tildesley. A History of Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton County Borough, 1960.
  • Mason, Frank. Wolverhampton, the Town Commissioners, 1777-1848: Their Story in Their Minutes and the Files of the Wolverhampton Chronicle. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton Public Libraries, 1976.
  • Morton, G. R. ‘The Industrial History of Darlaston’. West Midlands Studies 5 (1972): 11–15.
  • Palfrey, H.L. ‘The Foleys of Stourbridge’. Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 21 (1944).
  • ———. ‘The Architecture of the Old Meeting Houses’. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 8, no. 4 (1946): 181.
  • Palliser, David Michael, and Roy Millward. The Staffordshire Landscape. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
  • Raybould, T. J. ‘Charles Beaumont and the Reorganisation of Mineral Enterprise on Lord Dudley’s Estates, 1797-8’. West Midlands Studies 6 (1973): 23–29.
  • ———. ‘Systems of Management and Administration on the Dudley Estates 1774–1833’. Business History 10, no. 1 (1 January 1968): 1–11.
  • ———. ‘The Development and Organization of Lord Dudley’s Mineral Estates, 1774–1845’. The Economic History Review 21, no. 3 (1968): 529–44.
  • ———. The Economic Emergence of the Black Country : A Study of the Dudley Estate. Newton Abbot, 1973.
  • ———. ‘Aristocratic Landowners and the Industrial Revolution : The Black Country Experience, c. 1760-c. 1840’. Midland History 9 (1984): 59–68.
  • Robertson, Alan T. ‘The Contribution of Freemasons to Social and Economic Development in North Worcestershire c.1760-1824’, Midland History 45, no. 1 (2 January 2020): 55–74.
  • Rowlands, Marie B. English Catholics of Parish and Town, 1558-1778: A Joint Research Project of the Catholic Record Society and Wolverhampton University. Vol. 5. Catholic Record Society, 1999.
  • ———. Masters and Men: In the West Midland Metalware Trades before the Industrial Revolution. Manchester University Press, 1975.
  • ———. ‘Continuity and Change in an Industrialising Society: The Case of the West Midlands Industries’, in Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain, ed. Pat Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 103–31,
  • ———. ‘Industrialisation and Social Change in the West Midlands 1560-1760’. In The Onset of Industrialisation : Papers Presented at a Conference on the Teaching of Regional and Local History in Universities and Colleges, Held at Nottingham University, December, 1976., edited by Marilyn Palmer, 28–37. Nottingham, 1976.
  • ———. ‘Industry and Social Change in Staffordshire, 1660-1760 : A Study of the Probate and Other Records of Tradesmen’. Transactions, Lichfield & South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 9 (for 1967 1968): 37–58.
  • ———. ‘The Building of a Public Mass House in Wolverhampton, 1723-34’. Staffordshire Catholic History 1 (1961): 24–31.
  • Schranz, Kristen M. ‘The Tipton Chemical Works of Mr James Keir: Networks of Conversants, Chemicals, Canals and Coal Mines’. The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 84, no. 2 (1 July 2014): 248–73.
  • Sell, Alan P. F. ‘The Walsall Riots, the Rooker Family, and Eighteenth-Century Dissent’. Transactions, Lichfield & South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 25 (1985): 50–71.
  • Smith, Leonard D. ‘Eighteenth-Century Madhouse Practice : The Prouds of Bilston’. History of Psychiatry 3, no. 1 (1992): 45–52.
  • Smith, W. A. ‘John Wilkinson and the Industrial Revolution in South Staffordshire’. West Midlands Studies 5 (1972): 24–27.
  • Soldon, Norbert C. John Wilkinson 1728-1808 : English Ironmaster and Inventor. Studies in British History, 49. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.
  • Stuart, D. G. ‘The Burial-Grounds of the Society of Friends in Staffordshire’. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 12 (1971): 37–48.
  • Thomas, Richard, and Martin Lacock. ‘Food for the Dogs? The Consumption of Horseflesh at Dudley Castle in the Eighteenth Century’. Environmental Archaeology 5, no. 1 (1 June 2000): 83–91.
  • Tildesley, N. W. ‘Dr. Richard Wilkes of Willenhall, Staffs. : An 18th Century Country Doctor’. Transactions, Lichfield & South Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society 7 (1967): 1–10.
  • ———. ‘William Moreton of Willenhall’. In Essays in Staffordshire History Presented to S.A.H. Burne, edited by M.W. Greenslade, 6:171–85. Collections for a History of Staffordshire 4. Stafford: Staffordshire Record Society, 1970.
  • Upton, Chris. A History of Wolverhampton. Chichester: Phillimore, 2007.
  • Waddy, J. Leonard. The Bitter Sacred Cup: The Wednesbury Riots, 1743-44. Vol. Issue 36 of Wesley Historical Society lectures. London: Pinhorns for the World Methodist Historical Society (British Section), 1976.
  • ———. ‘Methodist Enrolled Deeds at the Public Record Office : The First Methodist Meeting-House in Wednesbury’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 42 (1979): 24–27.
  • Williams, Dale Edward. ‘Midland Hunger Riots in 1766’. Midland History 3, no. 4 (1976): 256–97.
  • Willis-Bund, J.W., ed. The Victoria County History of Worcester. Vol. 3. London: Victoria County History, 1913.
  • Wise, M. J. ‘The Decay of Agriculture in a Growing English Industrial Region : A Case Study’. Agricultural History 27 (1953): 108–11.
  • Yaussy, Samantha L. ‘The Intersections of Industrialization: Variation in Skeletal Indicators of Frailty by Age, Sex, and Socioeconomic Status in 18th- and 19th-Century England’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 170, no. 1 (2019): 116–30.
19th century
  • Allen, George Cyril. The Industrial Development of Birmingham and the Black Country, 1860-1927. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1929.
  • Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination 1830-1880. OUP Oxford, 2008.
  • Atkinson, C. T. ‘South Staffordshire Regiment : Early History’. Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 24 (1946): 98.
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20th century
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  • Barnsby, George J. A History of Education in Wolverhampton 1800 to 1972. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton Communist Party, 1972.
  • ———. A History of Housing in Wolverhampton, 1750 to 1975. Wolverhampton: Integrated Publishing Services, 1975.
  • ———. Socialism in Birmingham and the Black Country, 1850-1939. Wolverhampton: Integrated Publishing Services, 1998.
  • ———. Votes for Women: The Struggle for the Vote in the Black Country, 1900-1918. Socialist History Society Occasional Papers Series 3. Integrated Publishing Services, 1995.
  • Baugh, G.C., W.L. Cowie, J.C. Dickinson, A.P. Duggan, A.K.B. Evans, R.H. Evans, Una C. Hannam, et al. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 3. London: Victoria County History, 1970.
  • ———. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 17. London: Victoria County History, 1976. 
  • ———. A History of the County of Stafford. Edited by M.W. Greenslade and R.B Pugh. Vol. 20. London: Victoria County History, 1984.
  • Matt Beebee, ‘Navigating Deindustrialization in 1970s Britain: The Closure of Bilston Steel Works and the Politics of Work, Place, and Belonging’, Labour History Review 85, no. 3 (1 December 2020): 253–84.
  • Benson, John. ‘The Black Country Living Museum’. Labour History Review 66, no. 2 (2001): 243–51.
  • ———. ‘Drink, Death and Bankruptcy: Retailing and Respectability in Late Victorian and Edwardian England’. Midland History 32, no. 1 (2007): 128–40.
  • ———. ‘One Man and His Woman: Domestic Service in Edwardian England’. Labour History Review 72, no. 3 (2007): 203–14.
  • ———. The Wolverhampton Tragedy: Death and the ‘respectable’ Mr Lawrence. London: Carnegie Publishing, 2009.
  • ———. ‘Domination, Subordination and Struggle: Middle-Class Marriage in Early Twentieth-Century Wolverhampton, England’. Women’s History Review 19, no. 3 (1 July 2010): 421–33.
  • ———. ‘Sport, Class, and Place: Gerald Howard-Smith and Early Twentieth- Century Wolverhampton’. Midland History 37, no. 2 (1 September 2012): 207–21.
  • ———. Gerald Howard-Smith and the ‘Lost Generation’ of Late Victorian and Edwardian England. London: Routledge, 2016.
  • ———. ‘’The Office Boy’s Triumph’ : Deceit and Display in Early Twentieth-Century Wolverhampton’. Midland History 42, no. 1 (2017): 58–71.
  • Benson, John, Andrew Alexander, Deborah Hodson, John Jones, and Gareth Shaw. ‘Sources for the Study of Urban Retailing, 1800-1950, with Particular Reference to Wolverhampton’. Local Historian 29, no. 3 (1999).
  • Blackburn, Sheila C. ‘Employers and Social Policy: Black Country Chain-Masters, the Minimum Wage Campaign and the Cradley Heath Strike of 1910’. Midland History 12, no. 1 (1 January 1987): 85–102.
  • ———. ‘Working-Class Attitudes to Social Reform : Black Country Chainmakers and Anti-Sweating Legislation, 1880-1930’. International Review of Social History 33 (1988): 42–69.
  • Briercliffe, Simon. ‘BCLM: Forging Ahead: Building a New Urban History of the Black Country’. Urban History 48, no. 2 (May 2021): 334–50.
  • Bryson, John R., Michael Taylor, and Richard Cooper. ‘Competing by Design, Specialization and Customization: Manufacturing Locks in the West Midlands (UK)’. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 90, no. 2 (1 June 2008): 173–86.
  • Buettner, Elizabeth. ‘“This Is Staffordshire Not Alabama”: Racial Geographies of Commonwealth Immigration in Early 1960s Britain’. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42, no. 4 (8 August 2014): 710–40.
  • Callender, R. M. ‘Photography Underground’. British Mining 86 (2008): 59–67.
  • Cawood, Ian. ‘The Impact of the 1918 Reform Act on the Politics of the West Midlands’. Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 81–100
  • Chhabra, Anand. ‘Punjabi Migration to the Black Country: A Photographic Journey through History, Cultures and Digital Technology’. Photography and Culture 14, no. 3 (3 July 2021): 415–31.
  • Church, Roy A. Kenricks in Hardware: A Family Business, 1791-1966. London: David & Charles, 1969.
  • Critcher, Charles, Margaret Parker, and Ranjit Sondhi. Race in the Provincial Press: A Case Study of Five West Midland Newspapers. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Occasional Papers 39. Birmingham: University of Birmingham CCCS, 1975.
  • Davenport-Hines, R. P. T. Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  • Dudrah, Rajinder. ‘British Bhangra Music as Soundscapes of the Midlands’. Midland History 36, no. 2 (1 September 2011): 278–91.
  • Duffield, Mark. ‘Rationalization and the Politics of Segregation: Indian Workers in Britain’s Foundry Industry, 1945–62’. Immigrants & Minorities 4, no. 2 (1 July 1985): 142–72.
  • ———. Black Radicalism and the Politics of Deindustrialization: The Hidden History of Indian Foundry Workers in the West Midlands. Aldershot: Avebury, 1988.
  • Dutton, David. ‘Liberal Nationalism and the Decline of the British Liberal Party : Three Case Studies’. Canadian Journal of History 42, no. 3 (2007): 439–61.
  • Fantom, Paul. ‘Industry, Labour and Patriotism in the Black Country : Wednesbury at War, 1914-1918’. In The Great War : Localities and Regional Identities, edited by Craig Horner and Nicholas Mansfield, 53–76. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014.
  • ———. ‘Zeppelins over the Black Country: The Midlands’ First Blitz’. Midland History 39, no. 2 (1 September 2014): 236–54.
  • Filipová, Marta. ‘The Forefront of English Commercial Centres : Wolverhampton’s Exhibitions of 1869 and 1902’. In Cultures of International Exhibitions, 1840-1940: Great Exhibitions in the Margins, edited by Marta Filipová, 137–62. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
  • Foot, Paul. Immigration and Race in British Politics. London: Penguin, 1965.
  • ———. The Rise of Enoch Powell. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
  • Gilbert, Jenny. ‘“Better Dressed than Birmingham”? Wholesale Clothing Catalogues and the Communication of Mass Fashion, 1920s to 1960s’, Midland History 45, no. 2 (3 May 2020): 258–74.
  • Greene, Anne-Marie. ‘The Lock Museum, Willenhall’. Labour History Review 67, no. 3 (1 December 2002): 355–64.
  • Greenslade, M. W., and D. G. Stuart. A History of Staffordshire. 3rd ed. Chichester: Phillimore, 1998.
  • Groes, Sebastian and R. M. Francis, Smell, Memory, and Literature in the Black Country. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
  • Gullace, Nicoletta F. ‘Christabel Pankhurst and the Smethwick Election: Right-Wing Feminism, the Great War and the Ideology of Consumption’. Women’s History Review 23, no. 3 (4 May 2014): 330–46.
  • Hambler, Andrew, and Roger Seifert. ‘Wearing the Turban: The 1967-1969 Sikh Bus Drivers Dispute in Wolverhampton’. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, Volume 37, Pp83-111 37, no. 1 (1 September 2016): 83–111.
  • Harwood, Elain. ‘Neurath, Riley and Bilston, Pasmore and Peterlee’. Twentieth Century Architecture 9 (2008): 83–96.
  • Hawkins, Richard A. ‘The Dudley Refugee Committee and the Kindertransport, 1938–1945’. Jewish Historical Studies 51 (27 April 2020): 183–201.
  • Haye, Amy De La. ‘The Dissemination of Design from Haute Couture to Fashionable Ready-to-Wear during the 1920s with Specific Reference to the Hodson Dress Shop in Willenhall’. Textile History 24, no. 1 (1 January 1993): 39–48.
  • Hirsch, Shirin. In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality and Resistance. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.
  • Hodgson, Francis, ed. A Place of Noise & Confusion: Chris Steele-Perkins in Wolverhampton in 1978. Southport: Café Royal Books, 2019.
  • Hopkins, Eric. ‘Were the Webbs Wrong about Apprenticeship in the Black Country?’ West Midlands Studies 6 (1973): 29–32.
  • Hunt, Cathy. Righting the Wrong: Mary Macarthur 1880-1921. Birmingham: History West Midlands, 2019.
  • Jeremy, David J. ‘Businessmen in Interdenominational Activity: Birmingham Youth for Christ, 1940s-1950s’. Baptist Quarterly 33, no. 7 (1 January 1990): 336–43.
  • Jones, Edgar. A History of GKN Vol 2: The Growth of a Business, 1918–45. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990.
  • Jones, George William. Borough Politics: A Study of the Wolverhampton Town Council, 1888-1964. London: Macmillan, 1969.
  • Kassimeris, George, and Leonie Jackson. ‘Negotiating Race and Religion in the West Midlands: Narratives of Inclusion and Exclusion during the 1967–69 Wolverhampton Bus Workers’ Turban Dispute’. Contemporary British History 31, no. 3 (3 July 2017): 343–65.
  • Komaromy, Carol, and Jenny Hockey. ‘Growing Up Post-War: All Over Now?’ In Family Life, Trauma and Loss in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of War, 211–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018.
  • Lambert, J. R. ‘Book Review: Transport and Turbans: A Comparative Study in Local Politics’. International Migration Review 7, no. 1 (1 March 1973): 104–104.
  • Larkham, Peter J. ‘People, Planning and Place : The Roles of Client and Consultants in Reconstructing Post-War Bilston and Dudley’. Town Planning Review 77, no. 5 (2006): 557–82.
  • ———. ‘Rebuilding the Industrial Town: Wartime Wolverhampton’. Urban History 29, no. 3 (December 2002): 388–409.
  • ———. Reconstructing Wolverhampton : The Wartime Reconstruction Plan ‘Wolverhampton of the Future’. Working Paper Series, University of Central England in Birmingham. School of Planning 81. Birmingham: University of Central England, 2000.
  • ———. ‘Walsall: The Origin, Promotion and Disappearance of a Wartime “Reconstruction” Plan’. Planning History 25, no. 2 (2003): 5–11.
  • Lawrence, Jon. ‘The Complexities of English Progressivism: Wolverhampton Politics in the Early Twentieth Century’. Midland History 24, no. 1 (1 June 1999): 147–66.
  • Lippiatt, Graham. ‘The King of Showland’. Journal of Liberal History, no. 73 (2011): 28–34.
  • Long, Paul. ‘“But It’s Not All Nostalgia” : Public History and Local Identity in Birmingham’. In Seeing History : Public History in Britain Now, edited by Hilda Kean, Sally J. Morgan, and Paul Martin, 127–48. London: Francis Boutle, 2000.
  • Lorenz, Andrew. GKN: The Making of a Business, 1759 – 2009. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
  • Mander, Nicholas. ‘Last of the Midland Radicals: Sir Geoffrey Mander, Liberal MP for Wolverhampton East 1929-45’. Journal of Liberal History 53, no. Winter (2006): 26–32.
  • McKiernan, Mike. ‘Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, The Chainmaker 1907’. Occupational Medicine 61, no. 4 (1 June 2011): 224–25.
  • McLeay, P. ‘The Wolverhampton Motor Car Industry, 1896-1937’. West Midlands Studies 3 (1969): 100–104.
  • Morton, G. R., and M. Le Guillou. ‘Alfred Hickman Ltd, 1866-1932’. West Midlands Studies 3 (1969): 1–30.
  • Muggeridge, Anna. ‘A “Practical” Politics? Suffrage, Infant Welfare and Women’s Politics in Walsall, 1910-1939’. In The Politics of Women’s Suffrage: Local, National, and International Dimensions. New Historical Perspectives. London: University of London Press, 2021. [open access]
    Muggeridge, ‘Women and Politics in Smethwick, 1918-1929’. Midland History 47, no.2 (2022): 191-207
  • Nikolow, Sybilla. ‘Planning, Democratization and Popularization with Isotype, CA. 1945: A Study of Otto Neurath’s Pictorial Statistics with the Example of Bilston, England’. In Induction and Deduction in the Sciences, edited by Friedrich Stadler, 299–329. Dordrecht, Germany: Springer, 2004.
  • Noszlopy, George T., and Fiona Waterhouse. Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country. Public Sculpture of Britain, 9. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005.
  • Palliser, David Michael, and Roy Millward. The Staffordshire Landscape. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
  • Palmer, Roy. ‘The Minstrel of Quarry Bank: Reminiscences of George Dunn (1887-1975)’. Oral History 11, no. 2 (1983): 61–68.
  • Paulson, David. ‘The Professionalisation of Selling and the Transformation of a Family Business: Kenrick & Jefferson, 1878–1940’. Business History 62, no. 2 (2020): 261–91.
  • Peddie, Ian. ‘The Bleak Country? The Black Country and the Rhetoric of Escape’. In The Resisting Muse : Popular Music and Social Protest, edited by Ian Peddie, 132–48. Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
  • Porter, Dilwyn. ‘Whistling His Way to Wembley: Percy Harper of Stourbridge, Cup Final Referee’. Sport in History 35, no. 2 (3 April 2015): 217–40.
  • Price, A. E. ‘Early Two-Phase Distribution of Electricity in the West Midlands’. Papers Presented at the … IEE Weekend Meeting on the History of Electrical Engineering 11 (1983): 13:1-4.
  • Quigley, Paul. ‘Suburbanisation and Changing Landscape Character: The Example of the Black Country’. Landscapes 11, no. 2 (1 October 2010): 45–59.
  • Quigley, Paul, and Michael Shaw. ‘Characterization in an Urban Setting : The Experience of the Black Country’. Historic Environment : Policy & Practice 1, no. 1 (2010): 27–51.
  • Reekes, Andrew. ‘The West Midlands and Powell’s Birmingham Speech’. The Political Quarterly, 2018.
  • Reeves, Frank. Race and Borough Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1989.
  • Roberts, Cedric. ‘The Winter of 1947 in Halesowen, West Midlands’. Weather 58, no. 3 (n.d.): 113–19.
  • Searle, Kevin. ‘“Mixing of the Unmixables”: The 1949 Causeway Green “Riots” in Birmingham’. Race & Class 54, no. 3 (1 January 2013): 44–64.
  • Smith, John. ‘Ingenious and Daring: The Wolverhampton Council Fraud 1905-1917’. In Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780-1950, edited by James R. Moore and John Smith, 113–30. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
  • Spencer, Kenneth. Crisis in the Industrial Heartland: A Study of the West Midlands. Wotton-under-Edge: Clarendon Press, 1986.
  • Staples, Clifford L., and William G. Staples. ‘“A Strike of Girls” : Gender and Class in the British Metal Trades, 1913’. Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 2 (1999): 158–80.
  • ———. Power, Profits, and Patriarchy: The Social Organization of Work at a British Metal Trades Firm, 1791-1922. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
  • Street, Joe. ‘Malcolm X, Smethwick, and the Influence of the African American Freedom Struggle on British Race Relations in the 1960s’. Journal of Black Studies 38, no. 6 (1 July 2008): 932–50.
  • Tatla, Darshan S. ‘A Passage to England : Oral Tradition and Popular Culture among Early Punjabi Settlers in Britain’. Oral History 30, no. 2 (2002): 61–72.
  • Taylor, David J. ‘Factors Affecting Geographic Differences in Mortality Rates during the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic in the Black Country’. Local Historian 48, no. 4 (October 2018).
  • Taylor, Eric. ‘The Midland Counties Trades Federation’. Midland History 1, no. 3 (1972): 26-40
  • Upton, Chris. A History of Wolverhampton. Chichester: Phillimore, 2007.
  • Valler, David, and David Betteley. ‘The Politics of “Integrated” Local Policy in England’. Urban Studies 38, no. 13 (2001): 2392–2413.
    Vernon, Patrick. ‘Many Rivers to Cross: The Legacy of Enoch Powell in Wolverhampton’. In Windrush (1948) and Rivers of Blood (1968): Legacy and Assessment, edited by Trevor Harris. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
  • Watkiss Singleton, Rosalind. ‘’Crime? No, It Wasn’t Really Crime’: Using Oral History and Memoirs to Teach Crime History’. Law, Crime & History 4, no. 1 (2014). 
  • ———. ‘’Doing Your Bit’ : Women and the National Savings Movement in the Second World War’. In The Home Front in Britain : Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914. Ed. Andrews, Maggie; Lomas, Janis, 217–31. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
  • ———. ‘“(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”: Romantic Expectations of Teenage Girls in the 1960s West Midlands’. In Youth Culture and Social Change, 119–46. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
  • ———. ‘“What Are You Gonna Do Tonight?” “Wait for a Phone Call I Suppose”: Girls, Mod Subculture, and Reactions to the Film Quadrophenia’. In Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture, edited by Pamela Thurschwell, 151–72. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018.
  • Webber, Justin. ‘Greening the Black Country: The Work of the Midland Reafforesting Association in the Early Twentieth Century’. Arboricultural Journal 31, no. 1 (1 April 2008): 45–62.
  • Whyte, Iain Boyd. ‘Otto Neurath and the Sociology of Happiness’. In Man-Made Future: Planning, Education and Design in Mid-20th Century Britain, 16–38. London: Routledge, 2006.
  • Williams, Ned. ‘Researching the Local History of Cinema’. Local Historian 20, no. 3 (1990).
  • ———. ‘Early Days of the Black Country Society’. Local History News, no. 124 (2017).
  • Willis-Bund, J.W., ed. The Victoria County History of Worcester. Vol. 3. London: Victoria County History, 1913.
  • Wise, M. J. ‘The Birmingham-Black Country Conurbation in Its Regional Setting’. Geography 57, no. 2 (1972): 89–104.
  • Yemm, Rachel. ‘Immigration, Race and Local Media: Smethwick and the 1964 General Election’. Contemporary British History, 22 October 2018.

Business biography

  • Alfred Hickman Ltd.
    • Morton, G. R., and M. Le Guillou. ‘Alfred Hickman Ltd, 1866-1932’. West Midlands Studies 3 (1969): 1–30.
  • Archibald Kenrick & Sons
    • Church, Roy A. Kenricks in Hardware: A Family Business, 1791-1966. London: David & Charles, 1969.
  • Earl of Dudley
    • Hoskison, T. M. ‘The Earl of Dudley’s Level New Furnaces’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 28, no. 1 (1 January 1951): 153–61.
    • Raybould, T. J. ‘Charles Beaumont and the Reorganisation of Mineral Enterprise on Lord Dudley’s Estates, 1797-8’. West Midlands Studies 6 (1973): 23–29.
    • ———. ‘Systems of Management and Administration on the Dudley Estates 1774–1833’. Business History 10, no. 1 (1 January 1968): 1–11.
    • ———. ‘The Development and Organization of Lord Dudley’s Mineral Estates, 1774–1845’. The Economic History Review 21, no. 3 (1968): 529–44.
    • ———. The Economic Emergence of the Black Country : A Study of the Dudley Estate. Newton Abbot, 1973.
  • GKN
    • Carr, Chris, and Andrew Lorenz. ‘Robust Strategies: Lessons from GKN 1759–2013’. Business History 56, no. 7 (3 October 2014): 1169–95.
    • Docherty, Mike. ‘GKN Defence—A History in the Making’. The RUSI Journal 137, no. 3 (1 June 1992): 27–32.
    • Jones, Edgar. A History of GKN Vol 1: Innovation and Enterprise, 1759–1918. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987.
    • ———. A History of GKN Vol 2: The Growth of a Business, 1918–45. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990.
    • Lorenz, Andrew. GKN: The Making of a Business, 1759 – 2009. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
  • James Keir
    • Schranz, Kristen M. ‘The Tipton Chemical Works of Mr James Keir: Networks of Conversants, Chemicals, Canals and Coal Mines’. The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology 84, no. 2 (1 July 2014): 248–73.
  • Kendrick & Jefferson
    • Paulson, David. ‘The Professionalisation of Selling and the Transformation of a Family Business: Kendrick & Jefferson, 1878–1940’. Business History 62, no. 2 (2020): 261–91.
  • Lamella
    • Allen, J. S. ‘A Short History of “Lamella” Roof Construction’. Transactions of the Newcomen Society 71, no. 1 (1 January 1999): 1–29.
  • Matthew Harvey & Co.
    • Hayman, Richard. ‘The Archaeologist as Witness : Matthew Harvey’s Glebeland Works, Walsall’. Industrial Archaeology Review 19 (1997): 61–74.
  • New British Iron Co.
    • Chapman, Nigel A. ‘The New British Iron Company’. British Mining 96 (2013): 69–78.
  • Rubery Owen
    • Boyns, Trevor. ‘Organizational Change, Budgetary Control and Success and Failure in Formula 1: Rubery Owen and British Racing Motors, 1947–1977’. Management & Organizational History in press (2 February 2022): 1–24.
  • William Hunt & Sons/ Brades Works
    • Chapman, Nigel A. ‘The Brades Coal and Steel Works, Oldbury, Staffordshire’. British Mining 75 (2004): 47–57.
  • Wolverhampton Old Bank
    • Smith, W. A. ‘The Wolverhampton Old Bank’. West Midlands Studies 7 (1974): 1–5.
  • Small and independent firms
    • Chapman, Nigel A. ‘Coal Mining at Samson Colliery, Oldbury in the Nineteenth Century’. British Mining 93 (2012): 2–6.
    • Rowlands, Marie B. ‘Two 17th Century Ironmongers’. West Midlands Studies 7 (1974): 18–22.
    • Wise, M. J. ‘A South Staffordshire Colliery in the 19th Century : Brick House Colliery, Rowley Regis’, 243–63, 1950.
Theses

NB – most of these are available with a free registration to the British Library’s EThOS service.

Theses in progress
  • Barnsley, Paul. ‘Deindustrialisation, workplace culture and identity in the Black Country‘. PhD, University of Wolverhampton
  • Davies, Judith. ‘Politics and religion in nineteenth-century Dudley‘. PhD, University of Birmingham
  • Jones, Claire, ‘To what extent do the 2014-18 Centenary Commemorations completed within the Black Country region confirm or deny the British Social Memory of the Great War 1914-18, making reference to Battlefield Tourism and Education? PhD, University of Wolverhampton.
  • Thomson, Elizabeth. ‘Brickmaking in the Black Country‘. PhD, University of Birmingham/Black Country Living Museum

F.W. Hackwood

(F.W. Hackwood’s histories of the Black Country are, in most cases, well over a century old; nevertheless they are so good as to be a starting point for many still, so I’ve listed them here by publication date. Some are available for free online; a number have been reprinted by Brewin Books)

  • Wednesbury Papers. Wednesbury: R. Ryder & Son, 1884.
  • A History of Darlaston near Wednesbury. Wednesbury: Horton Bros., 1887.
  • Olden Wednesbury, Its Whims and Ways: Being Some Odd Chapters in the History of Wednesbury. Wednesbury: R. Ryder & Son, 1889.
  • Wednesbury Workshops. Wednesbury, 1889.
  • History of Tipton, 1891.
  • A History of West Bromwich. Birmingham, 1895.
  • Sedgley Researches. Dudley: Herald Press, 1896.
  • Some Records of Smethwick. Smethwick, 1896.
  • Wednesbury Faces, Places and Industries. Wednesbury: Horton Bros., 1897.
  • Wednesbury Local Notes and Queries. Wednesbury, 1900.
  • Religious Wednesbury, Its Creeds, Churches and Chapels. Dudley: Herald Press, 1900.
  • The Story of the Black Country. Wolverhampton, 1902.
  • Wednesbury Ancient and Modern: Being Mainly Its Manorial and Municipal History. Wednesbury: R. Ryder & Son, 1902.
  • Annals of Willenhall. Wolverhampton: Whitehead Bros., 1908.
  • Oldbury and Round About: In the Worcestershire Corner of the Black Country. Birmingham: Cornish Bros. and Whitehead Bros., 1915.
  • Staffordshire Sketches, 1916.
  • The ‘Miraculous Escape’ at Moseley Old Hall: Extract from The King’s Flight Through Staffordshire. Birmingham: W.I. Rodway & Co, 1946.
Fiction/Memoir
  • Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Chapman & Hall, 1840-1841
  • Disraeli, Benjamin. Sybil: or, The Two Nations. Henry Colburn, 1845
  • Enright, D.J. The Terrible Shears. Chatto & Windus, 1973
  • Murray, David Christie. A Capful O’ Nails. Chatto & Windus, 1896
  • Petty, John. Five Fags a Day: The Last Year of a Scrap-picker.
    Secker & Warburg, 1956
  • ———. A Flame In My Heart. Secker & Warburg, 1958
  • Sanghera, Sathnam. The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton. Penguin, 2009
  • Syal, Meera. Anita & Me. Flamingo, 1996
  • Walford, Christian (Noreen Ford Dilcock. The Little Masters, 1969
  • Young, Francis Brett. The Iron Age. Martin Secker, 1916
  • ———. The Young Physician. Collins, 1919
  • ———. The Black Diamond. Collins, 1921
  • ———. Cold Harbour. Collins, 1924
  • ———. Portrait of Clare. Heinemann, 1927
  • ———. Jim Redlake. Heinemann, 1930
  • ———. Mr & Mrs Pennington. Heinemann, 1931
  • ———. White Ladies. Heinemann, 1935
  • ———. Far Forest. Heinemann, 1936
  • ———. Dr Bradley Remembers. Heinemann, 1938
  • ———. Wistanslow. Heinemann, 1956
  • Young, Francis Brett with William Armstrong. The Furnace. Heinemann, 1928 [adaptation of The Iron Age for stage]

Last updated 5 September 2022