Willenhall is famous for the manufacture of locks, and the Locksmith's House (The Lock Museum), dating from Victorian times, demonstrates how one particular family of lockmakers lived and worked at the very beginning of the 20th century. This small museum is managed by the Black Country Living Museum and is open for pre-arranged group visits, including educational programmes for schools. The Locksmith's House is situated in New Road.
To make trading easier, the New Road (a toll road) was built before 1820, acting as an effective bypass for the main high street. Outside the town itself, settlements grew up around local industries. The area around Lane Head and Sandbeds had a thriving mining community and Portobello grew around the brickmaking industry. There was a lot of coal mining in the Willenhall area until the 19th century when the industry came to a dramatic halt after a strike when the mines were flooded and lost forever. Lockmaking began in the area in Elizabethan times mainly in Wolverhampton, Willenhall and Bilston. Eventually it became concentrated in Willenhall, where lock making had begun as a cottage industry with many families producing locks and parts for locks in sheds or outhouses at the rear of their homes. Because long hours bending over their work tended to produce workers with humps on their backs, the town became known locally as 'Humpshire' and is still regarded as such with affection by many locals.
As late as 1956 there were still local men who had humps. Some public houses even had holes in the wall behind the wooden bench seats to allow their patrons to sit comfortably with their hump in the hole. Nearly all examples of such 'pubs' have been lost. The Bell Inn in Market Street is an example of such a pub with curved holes in the walls to allow hump backed drinkers to sit up straight. Rushbrook's was a bakery in Market Street, Willenhall. In 1853, Rushbrook's struck their own "Rushbrook Farthing",[20] a tradesman's token widely in use in the area. In the early 1960s the Spring Vale Tavern in St Anne's Road was renamed The Rushbrook Farthing in remembrance of this unusual practice.