I recently paid a visit to the Black Country Museum in the middle of England. The area that it looks back on, was known as the Black Country because there was so much Victorian/Industrial activity in the area, with so much beltching smoke and furious furnaces, that during the day it seemed almost pitch, and during the night the whole area almost glowed firey red.

It’s an open air museum, and they have managed to recreate a lot of Victorian life in that area – the iron works, and lime kilns, recreations of some of the worlds first steam engines, and steam wagons driving up and down the road. As a day trip, it was fantastic – though firmly Victorian rather than Steampunk, there were the machines and contraptions that fuelled Steampunk visions aplenty.

Flikr set of photos of the day.