19-04-2025
I found tiny version of Black Country Living Museum and it is free to enter
The Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) is a hugely popular attraction, showcasing the region's industrial heritage and providing a great day out.
But if you're strapped for cash, or fancy exploring somewhere new, there's a smaller and free alternative just down the road.
Located just over four miles away, Mushroom Green Chainshop is thought to be the world's oldest - and last surviving - chain-making shop that's still on its original site.
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It is voluntarily run by sculptor Luke Perry, 41, and his wife Natalie, 40, an illustrator and writer, along with two other volunteers.
The workshop is located down a winding road in the hamlet of Mushroom Green, situated off Quarry Bank Road in between Quarry Bank, Cradley Heath and Netherton.
It's believed to have been built in the mid-1860s and has remarkably survived intact until the present day.
While the workshop has had modern additions, other parts, such as the cobbled floor, are original.
Inside is like stepping into a time capsule.
You'll find six hearths, a bellow, an array of tools including big iron hammers and assortments of different chains.
Attached to the workshop is a little cottage, complete with an original stove and sink. In its small kitchen, a rack of postcards and photographs has been positioned for visitors.
Resting next to the wall outside is a rock with the number 1747 inscribed on it, which Mr Perry believes could have been an 'edging stone' bearing a date.
Inside, the workshop houses a huge, single chain link that was rumoured to have been part of a test chain for the Titanic.
Luke and Natalie have voluntarily run the workshop for 18 years, and Dudley Council owns the site.
The couple are both chain-makers, with Natalie one of the last female chain-makers in the region.
Luke said: "There are a lot of heritage museums, a few of them have got a chain-making shop.
"There are also buildings that would have been chain shops that are now people's garages and houses.
"But this (Mushroom Green Chainshop) is the only one that is still working. So it is the only chain shop - that anybody knows of - on its original site that is working in the world.
"It was something like 90% of the chain and anchors used around the globe came from within about two miles of here."
Netherton is famous locally for being the place where the Titanic's anchor was made.
It was manufactured by N Hingley & Sons in 1911 and pulled through the streets on a wagon drawn by 20 shire horses.
Luke, whose family has made chains in Cradley Heath for 200 years, appeared in a Channel 4 TV series in 2010 called Titanic: The Mission, which recreated that epic journey.
Pointing to a large chain resting on the floor of the workshop, Luke said: "That piece, allegedly, was meant to be the Titanic's test chain."
Natalie explained how when she and her husband first took over the workshop, it provided a refuge who elderly chain-makers of the area.
She said: "When we started doing it, it was kind of a retirement place for chain-makers.
"All these kind of 80-year-old fellows would come and hang out, have tea and tell us all about how it used to be."
Since then, those local chain-makers have been coming less and less as they've gotten older.
But the chainshop has become a source of interest for families looking into their heritage.
People have travelled in from all over the world, including the likes of Australia, whilst trying to "find out more about their families here," said Nat.
She added: "It's been interesting over almost 20 years to see how this place appeals in different ways to different people and how it has changed."
Luke, who is a keen historian on the subject, explained how chain-makers may get a false image of being 'rough and thuggish'.
Luke, whose grandad was a chain-maker, said: "All the chain-makers I ever knew were very gentlemenly.
"They weren't these thuggish wife-beaters that they seemed to purvey as an idea of what people were. I know that was around.
"But the ones I knew were soppy, cry-at-adverts on television type of guys."
It wasn't just men who were chain-makers, though.
So, too, were women, and the female chain-makers of Cradley Heath famously carried out a strike in 1910 over low pay, led by a campaigner called Mary Macarthur.
A monument was sculpted in their honour by Luke in 2011 and now proudly stands in Cradley Heath today.
Natalie said: "The women who did it (carried out the strike) were so brave because they were risking starvation for their families.
"They were having to trust this woman, Mary McArthur, that they had the strike fund.
"It was such a big gamble."
Asked if women who took part in the strike could have come from the Mushroom Green Chainshop, Luke said: "Absolutely, there were 800 women in the chain-makers strike and it was supported by the men because everyone wanted better rights."
He added: "It would have definitely taken in this area. I can't see how it wouldn't have."
Natalie encouraged members of the public to visit Mushroom Green Chainshop for themselves, saying: "You can come out for a nice day out down here.
"You can do the Saltwells (Nature Reserve) walk and pop into Mushroom Green and the pub. It's a really nice little journey."
Mushroom Green Chainshop opens on the second Sunday of every month between April and October, running from 2pm until 4.30pm.
