Princes End is in an area that was the heartland of metal working industries during Victorian times, characterised by coal mines, slag heaps, blast furnaces, foundries, casting works and so on, with smoke-blackened buildings and chimneys belching all kinds of fumes from horizon to horizon. Apocryphally, the term Black Country was coined by Queen Victoria when passing through by train, but there is some evidence that the name is older and refers to shallow or outcropping coal deposits. Anyway, the name stuck and, although there is no clearly defined boundary, the area between Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich and Stourbridge is generally referred to as the Black Country today. Back in the 1860s and 70s it was a grim place to exist, with very low life expectancy, heavy pollution, crashing industrial sounds (even in the early 1980s I stood outside just one factory where the violent thud of presses made the ground shake so that I felt lifted off my feet, and this would have been going on night and day all around). Today there are still places that have not been redeveloped because the contamination is so severe and costly to remediate - I worked on an old power station site where it took 20 months and £16 million just to get the ground in a fit state to build on.
People have suggested renaming the area, but how do you overcome: where?; the Black Country; oh there, why didn't you say?
Anyway, hope that clarifies it a bit.
