The Midlands

        With the first (more than) half of our classes, and one midterm behind us, the last five days were spent getting a more experience based education on the industrial revolution period, and the lives of those who lived in England during that time.   We moved to the town of Shrewsbury, on the Welsh border, as a base for our daily excursions.  Our first stop, not necessarily having to do with the IR but certainly to the delight of all, was the Cadbury factory in Birmingham.  After obtaining a thorough knowledge of how Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate was invented and produced, and subsequently filling our bellies with the many samples provided, we managed to escape the Cadbury grounds without giving into the temptation to buy the 5 kilo (that's 11 lbs) bars in the gift shop.

        Saturday, we rode the bus back towards Birmingham, to the Black Country Living Museum near the town of Dudley.  The museum's website gives the following description of the area:

The Black Country is the industrial region to the west of, and separate from, Birmingham in the Midlands of England. It gained its name in the mid nineteenth century due to the smoke from the many thousands of ironworking foundries and forges and the nature of the countryside which had been covered by dark spoil from the working of shallow and relatively thick (30ft) coal seams.

The region was described as 'Black by day and red by night' by Elihu Burritt, the American Consul to Birmingham in 1862 and other authors, from Dickens to Shenstone, refer to the intensity of manufacturing in the Black Country and its effect on the landscape and its people.

Our day at the museum included a walking tour of an old coal mine, a boat ride through a series of limestone mines/caverns, and presentations of the many craftsmen's shops and homes.

        Sunday, we visited the small town of Ironbridge, where they have... you guessed it, an iron bridge.  Actually it was the first iron bridge ever built, a product of the new technology of malleable iron.  We also visited the ruins of the iron foundries, where the giant furnaces separated the iron ore from the rock surrounding it.

        Monday, we travelled northeast to Stoke-upon-Trent, to the Gladstone Pottery Museum.  The museum has preserved a set of four bottle-shaped pottery kilns and the complex surrounding them.  Our tour included demonstrations of the pottery making process, and examples of the conditions under which the men, women and children of the mid-19th century worked and lived.

       In the prior three days we had seen the relics of several industries that were of great importance to England during the industrialization period, but the most important industry for the british economy was the textile industry.  Tuesday we travelled north to Manchester to the Quarry Bank Mill.  This textile mill, which still works to this day, also contains a museum that wonderfully illustrates the evolution of textile producing technology, and the effect that these changes had on the working population.

        Tuesday afternoon, we concluded out tour of the midlands with another lighter visit, this time to the home of the Manchester United Football Team, known as the "theatre of dreams", or more properly, Old Trafford.  We toured the ManU museum, were given a tour of the stadium, and found out that Pavel can kick a soccer ball really, really hard (though still not as hard as Cristiano "I'm a huge baby" Ronaldo).

        After a fun and interesting five days in the midlands, we now prepare for our trip to the continent.