Why is the black country in the midlands called the black country?

Question

Why is the black country in the midlands called the black country?

Answer 1

By the late 19th century, this area had become one of the most intensely industrialized in the nation. The South Staffordshire coal mines, the coal coking operations, and the iron foundries and steel mills that used the local coal to fire its furnaces, produced a level of air pollution that had few equals anywhere in the world.

However, historians suggest that it is more likely that the name existed even before the Industrial Revolution; outcroppings of black coal scarred the surface of the local heath, and the presence of coal so near the surface rendered the local soil very black.