Editing Black Country (section)

===Geological definitions===
[[File:Griffiths' Guide to the iron trade of Great Britain an elaborate review of the iron (and) coal trades for last year, addresses and names of all ironmasters, with a list of blast furnaces, iron (14763815742).jpg|thumb|Mining the thick coal seam at one of the Earl of Dudley's pits in the 1870s]]
The [[Black Country Society]] defines the borders as the area on the {{convert|30|foot}} coal seam, regardless the depth of the seam. This definition includes West Bromwich and Oldbury, which had many deep pits, and Smethwick. The thick coal that underlies Smethwick was not mined until the 1870s and Smethwick has retained more [[Victorian era|Victorian]] character than most West Midland areas.<ref>J. Fletcher, ‘What is the Black Country’, The Blackcountryman 1(1) (1967), 11-13 [https://www.blackcountrysociety.com/post/what-is-the-black-country-volume-1-1-1967-by-dr-john-fletcher]</ref> Sandwell Park Colliery's pit was located in Smethwick and had 'thick coal' as shown in written accounts from 1878. Coal was also heavily mined in [[Hamstead, West Midlands|Hamstead]], further east,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/robertburden/Sandwell.htm |title=Sandwell Park colliery |access-date=23 July 2014 |archive-date=25 February 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150225022706/http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/robertburden/Sandwell.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> whose workings extended well under what is now north Birmingham. Smethwick and Dudley Port were described as "a thousand swarming hives of metallurgical industries" by Samuel Griffiths in 1872.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/articles/BlackCountry2.htm|title = The Black Country}}</ref>

Another geological definition, the seam outcrop definition, only includes areas where the coal seam is shallow, making the soil black at the surface. Some coal mining areas to the east and west of the geologically defined Black Country are therefore excluded by this definition because the coal here is too deep down and does not outcrop. The seam outcrop definition excludes areas in North [[Worcestershire]] and [[South Staffordshire]].{{Citation needed|date=July 2014}}