Why 14 July

In 2014, a unified festival brought together the boroughs of Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Sandwell in a single celebration. The first of its kind, it grew from a desire to acknowledge the cultural heritage, history and continuing evolution of the Black Country, and it began an annual tradition of looking back at the past while recognising the region’s present and future.

14 July is Black Country Day because it marks the anniversary of the world’s first commercially successful steam engine, the Newcomen atmospheric engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. First installed at the Coneygree Coal Works in Tipton, the engine allowed miners to pump water out of deep coal mines and effectively started the Industrial Revolution. The Black Country is known as the birthplace of that revolution, and takes its name from the colour of the sky in the 1700s and 1800s, when smoke from hundreds of chimney stacks burning coal across the region turned it black.