A local tradition states that King
Wulfhere of Mercia founded an
abbey of St Mary at Wolverhampton in 659. Wolverhampton is recorded as being the site of a
decisive battle between the unified Mercian Angles and West Saxons against the raiding Danes in 910, although sources are unclear as to whether the battle itself took place in
Wednesfield or
Tettenhall. Both places have since been incorporated into Wolverhampton. The Mercians and West Saxons claimed a decisive victory, and the field of Woden is recognised by numerous place names in Wednesfield. on western side of
St. Peter's Collegiate Church In 985, King
Ethelred the Unready granted lands at a place referred to as to Lady Wulfrun by royal charter, and hence founding the settlement. In 994, a
monastery was consecrated in Wolverhampton for which Wulfrun granted land at
Upper Arley in Worcestershire,
Bilston,
Willenhall, Wednesfield,
Pelsall,
Ogley Hay near
Brownhills, Hilton near
Wall,
Hatherton,
Kinvaston, Hilton near Wolverhampton, and
Featherstone. A statue of Lady Wulfrun, sculpted by
Sir Charles Wheeler, can be seen on the stairs outside the church. Wolverhampton at this date is a large settlement of fifty households. In 1179, there is mention of a market held in the town, and in 1204 it had come to the attention of
King John that the town did not possess a Royal Charter for holding a market. This charter for a weekly market held on a Wednesday was eventually granted on 4 February 1258 by
Henry III. and by the many small streets, especially in the city centre, called "Fold" (examples being Blossom's Fold, Farmers Fold, Townwell Fold and Victoria Fold), as well as Woolpack Street and Woolpack Alley. From the 16th century onwards, Wolverhampton became home to a number of metal industries including lock and
key making and iron and
brass working. Wolverhampton suffered two Great Fires: the first in April 1590, and the second in September 1696. Both fires started in today's Salop Street. The first fire lasted for five days and left nearly 700 people homeless, whilst the second destroyed 60 homes in the first five hours. This second fire led to the purchase of the first
fire engine within the city in September 1703. two farmers, Thomas Smart and John Holyhead of
Rowley Regis, were executed on High Green, now Queen Square, for sheltering two of the
Gunpowder Plotters,
Robert Wintour and
Stephen Littleton, who had fled to the Midlands. The pair played no part in the original plot nevertheless suffered a traitor's death of being
hanged, drawn and quartered on butcher's blocks set up in the square a few days before the execution of
Guy Fawkes and several other plotters in London.
19th century A few years before she began her reign,
Queen Victoria visited Wolverhampton in the 1830s and described it as "a large and dirty town" but one which received her "with great friendliness and pleasure". In
Victorian times, Wolverhampton grew to be a wealthy town mainly due to the huge amount of industry that occurred as a result of the abundance of coal and iron deposits in the area. The remains of this wealth can be seen in local houses such as
Wightwick Manor and The Mount (both built for the prominent varnish and paint manufacturers, the
Mander family) as well as Tettenhall Towers. All three are located in the western fringe of Wolverhampton, in the areas known as Wightwick and Tettenhall. Many other houses of similar stature were demolished in the 1960s and 1970s. Wolverhampton gained its first parliamentary representation as part of the
Reform Act 1832, when it was one of 22 large towns that were allocated two members of parliament. A local mob attacking electors who voted or intended to vote for the
Tory candidate led to the
1835 Wolverhampton riot, with
dragoons being called in to end the intimidation. Wolverhampton was incorporated as a
municipal borough on 15 March 1848 under the
Municipal Corporations Act 1835 before becoming a
county borough in 1889. It was represented politically in Victorian times by
Charles Pelham Villiers, a
Liberal MP and noted
free trade supporter who was also the longest-serving MP in parliamentary history.
Lord Wolverhampton, Henry Hartley Fowler was MP for Wolverhampton at the turn of the century. The railways reached Wolverhampton in 1837, with the first station located at
Wednesfield Heath, now Heath Town, on the
Grand Junction Railway. This station was demolished in 1965, but the area exists as a nature reserve just off Powell Street.
Wolverhampton railway works was established in 1849 for the
Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway and became the Northern Division workshop of the
Great Western Railway in 1854. In the 19th century, the city saw much immigration from
Wales and
Ireland, the latter following the
Great Famine. In 1866, a statue was erected in memory of
Prince Albert the Prince Consort, the unveiling of which brought Queen Victoria back to Wolverhampton. The unveiling of the statue was the first public appearance Queen Victoria made after the funeral of her husband. A archway made of coal was constructed for the visit. The Queen was so pleased with the statue that she knighted Wolverhampton's mayor at the time, an industrialist named
John Morris. Market Square, originally named High Green, was renamed Queen Square in honour of the visit. The statue replaced a Russian cannon captured during the
Siege of Sevastopol in 1855,
20th century Wolverhampton had a prolific bicycle industry from 1868 to 1975, during which time a total of more than 200 bicycle manufacturing companies existed, none remaining today. These manufacturers included Viking, Marston, Sunbeam, Star, Wulfruna and Rudge. The last volume manufacturers of bicycles left Wolverhampton during the 1960s and 1970s – the largest and best-known of which was Viking Cycles Ltd, whose team dominated the UK racing scene in the 1950s (Viking's production of hand-built lightweight racing and juvenile bicycles exceeded 20,000 units in 1965). Closures of other smaller cycle makers followed during the 1980s including such well-known hand-builders as
Percy Stallard (the former professional cyclist) and Jack Hateley.
Wolverhampton High Level station (the current main railway station) opened in 1852, but the original station was demolished in 1965 and then rebuilt.
Wolverhampton Low Level station opened on the Great Western Railway in 1855. The site of the Low Level station, which closed to passengers in 1972 and completely in 1981, has since been redeveloped with much of the original station incorporated into a hotel. In 1918 at "The Mount" in
Tettenhall Wood, the British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George announced a general election. He also made his "Homes fit for heroes" speech at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre in the same year. It was on the idea of "Homes fit for heroes" that Lloyd George was to fight the
1918 "Coupon" General Election. Mass
council housing development in Wolverhampton, to rehouse families from slum housing, began after the end of the
World War I. New estates at Parkfields (near the border with
Coseley) and Birches Barn (near Bantock Park in the west of Wolverhampton) gave the city some 550 new council houses by 1923, although this was a fraction of the number required. The first large council housing development in Wolverhampton was the
Low Hill estate to the north-east of the city, which consisted of more than 2,000 new council houses by 1927 and was one of the largest housing estates in Britain at the time. Mass council housing development in Wolverhampton continued into the 1930s, mostly in the north of the city in the
Oxley and
Wobaston areas and on the new
Scotlands Estate in the north-east. However, council house building halted in 1940 following the outbreak of
World War II in September the previous year.
Wolverhampton St George's (in the city centre) was the northern terminus for the
West Midlands Metro light rail system, now terminating at
Wolverhampton station. An extension to the railway station opened in 2023, the opening being delayed until the new railway station was completed. Wolverhampton was one of the few towns to operate surface contact trams and the only town to use the Lorain Surface Contact System.
Trolleybuses appeared in 1923, and in 1930 for a brief period the
Wolverhampton trolleybus system was the world's largest trolleybus system. The last Wolverhampton trolleybus ran in 1967, just as the railway line through the High Level station was converted to electric operation. England's first automatic
traffic lights could be seen in Princes Square in 1927. The modern traffic lights at this location have the traditional striped poles to commemorate this fact. Princes Square was also the location of the United Kingdom's first pedestrian safety barriers, which were erected in 1934. On 2 November 1927, the
A4123 New Road was opened by the then-Prince of Wales (later
Edward VIII) linking the city with
Birmingham. The New Road was designed as an unemployment relief project and was the United Kingdom's first purpose-built intercity highway of the twentieth century.
Sir Geoffrey Le Mesurier Mander, a member of the
Mander family, was Liberal MP for
Wolverhampton East from 1929 to 1945, distinguished for his stance against
appeasement and as a supporter of the
League of Nations. He was known as "the last of the Midland radicals". More recent members have included the
Conservative mavericks
Enoch Powell and
Nicholas Budgen. Powell was a member of
Edward Heath's Tory shadow cabinet from 1964, until he was dismissed in April 1968 following his controversial
Rivers of Blood speech in which he warned of massive civil unrest if mass immigration of black and Asian
commonwealth inhabitants continued. At the same period, Sikh bus drivers and conductors were demonstrating in Wolverhampton against the Transportation Committee's regulations requiring uniform caps and thus prohibiting turbans. In 2005, former
Bilston councillor and MP for
Wolverhampton South East,
Dennis Turner entered the House of Lords as Lord Bilston. Following the end of World War II in 1945, the council erected 400 prefabricated bungalows across Wolverhampton, and built its first permanent postwar houses at the Underhill Estate near
Bushbury in the late 1940s. The 1950s saw many new houses and flats built across Wolverhampton as the rehousing programme from the slums continued, as well as the local council agreeing deals with neighbouring authorities
Wednesfield Urban District and
Seisdon Rural District which saw families relocated to new estates in those areas. The 1960s saw the rehousing programme continue, with multi-storey blocks being built on a large scale across Wolverhampton at locations including
Blakenhall,
Whitmore Reans and
Chetton Green. The later part of the decade saw the
Heath Town district almost completely redeveloped with multi-story flats and maisonette blocks. By 1975, by which time Wolverhampton had also taken in the majority of the Borough of
Bilston, the Urban Districts of
Wednesfield and
Tettenhall and parts of
Willenhall,
Sedgley and
Coseley, almost a third of Wolverhampton's population lived in council housing, but since that date social housing has been built on a minimal scale in the area, and some of the 1919–1975 developments have since been demolished. As well as the many new council estates which sprang up around Wolverhampton during the 20th century, several older parts of the town were redeveloped for new council housing during the 1960s and early 1970s. The most notable example is the Heath Town area, where almost all of the 19th-century buildings were demolished during the 1960s and replaced by four tower blocks and several blocks of maisonettes. However, the state housing at Heath Town quickly became unpopular and by the 1980s the area was plagued with crime and unemployment. The first regeneration projects on the estate began during the 1990s, and in 2017 some of the maisonette blocks were demolished. A similar redevelopment took place around the same time in Blakenhall, where new shops and five tower blocks were built in a 1960s redevelopment area. However, all of these buildings were demolished between 2002 and 2011 and have since been replaced with new private and social housing. Large numbers of black and Asian immigrants settled in Wolverhampton from the 1950s and 1960s, mostly in the
Blakenhall,
All Saints,
Whitmore Reans and
Heath Town areas. Wolverhampton is home to a large
Sikh community, who settled there during the period (1935–1975) from the Indian state of
Punjab. Today, the Sikh community in Wolverhampton is roughly 12% of the city's population. In 1974, as a result of local government reorganisation, Wolverhampton became a
metropolitan borough, transferring from the ceremonial Staffordshire into the newly formed West Midlands county; though it is important to note that as a
County Borough, it was never administered by Staffordshire County Council. Wolverhampton was granted
city status, announced on 18 December 2000 and formally conferred on 31 January 2001 – an honour that had been unsuccessfully applied for in 1953, 1966, 1977, 1985 and 1992 Wolverhampton also made an unsuccessful application for a Lord Mayor in 2002. and a framed timber 17th-century building on Victoria Street which is now one of just two remaining in the area which was heavily populated by them until the turn of the 20th century. This building was originally a residential property, but later became the Hand Inn public house. Later becoming Lindy Lou's children's shop and still called Lindy Lou's by locals. It carries a "false" date of 1300AD fitted during a past refurbishment. It was completely restored in 1981 after a two-year refurbishment project and has been used by various businesses since then including as a second-hand book shop. On 23 November 1981,
an F1/T2 tornado touched down in
Fordhouses to the north of Wolverhampton, and later moved over Wolverhampton city centre and surrounding suburbs, causing some damage. The
Wolverhampton Ring Road circumnavigates the city centre linking the majority of the city's radial routes. It was constructed in sections between 1960 and 1986, and carries the number A4150, although this is only marked on one road sign. The centre of Wolverhampton has been altered radically since the mid-1960s, with the Mander Centre (plans for which were unveiled on 15 April 1965) being opened in two phases, the first in 1968 and the second in 1971. Several refurbishments have taken place since. The Wulfrun Centre, an open shopping area, was opened alongside the Mander Centre's first phase in 1968, but has been undercover since a roof was added in the late 1990s. Central Wolverhampton police station was built just south of the city centre on Birmingham Road during the 1960s, but operations there were cut back in the early 1990s when a new larger police station was built on Bilston Street on land which became vacant a decade earlier on the demolition of a factory along with a number of shops and the Clifton Cinema. This was officially opened by
Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 July 1992. The city centre had several cinemas during the 20th century, including the
Odeon Cinema. The last of these was the ABC Cinema (formerly the Savoy), which closed in 1991 after 54 years. It was then converted into a nightclub, with part of the site being converted into the offices of a
recruitment agency in 2005. The building was demolished in 2019 to make way for an extension to the
City of Wolverhampton College's Metro One campus. A modern landmark in the city centre is the
Wolverhampton Combined Court Centre on Pipers Row, which opened in 1990 as the town's first purpose-built crown court.
21st century A few department store chains including
Marks & Spencer and
Next have stores in the centre of Wolverhampton.
Beatties, a
House of Fraser store, was announced to close in 2019.
Debenhams opened a 3-floor department store in the
Mander Centre in 2017, but has now closed. In 2021, a
blue plaque was erected in memory of British immigrant rights activist
Paulette Wilson, a member of the
Windrush generation. The plaque was launched with campaigners including
Patrick Vernon and
Claire Darke at the Wolverhampton Heritage Centre. The centre is a cornerstone of the area's local Caribbean community and was formerly the constituency office of
Enoch Powell where his
Rivers of Blood speech was written.
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government On 20 February 2021, it was announced as part of the government's levelling up strategy, that the
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (now the
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) would be the first government department to have a headquarters based outside of London. Five hundred posts, including those of senior civil servants, are scheduled to be moving to Wolverhampton by 2025. The then Secretary of State,
Robert Jenrick officially opened the Ministry's new offices in the i9 building at the city's public transport interchange development on 10 September 2021.
Art and culture From the 18th century, Wolverhampton was well known for production of
japanned ware and steel jewellery. The renowned 18th- and 19th-century artists
Joseph Barney (1753–1832),
Edward Bird (1772–1819), and
George Wallis (1811–1891) were all born in Wolverhampton and initially trained as japanned ware painters. The School of Practical Art was opened in the 1850s and eventually became a close associate of the Art Gallery. Among its students and teachers were Robert Jackson Emerson (1878–1944), Sir Charles Wheeler (Emerson's most famous pupil and the sculptor of the fountains in
Trafalgar Square),
Sara Page who established her studio in Paris, and many other artists and sculptors recognised locally and nationally.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery was established in 1884, whilst
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre was opened in 1894. There is a Creative Industries Quarter in Wolverhampton, just off Broad Street, with facilities ranging from the newly opened
Slade Rooms, to the art house cinema the
Light House Media Centre (closed in 2022) and the Arena Theatre, which is part of the
University of Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton has a strong history in the ornate cast iron safe painting industry from the Victorian era. Numerous companies, such as
Chubb Lock and Safe Company, expanded their artistic status to international reputation, whereby a safe became a work of art with fine script and hand-painted designs. The Chubb Building was converted into a National Historic Registered Landmark Treasure in 1992, which now houses a cinema, art galleries, nightclub, business offices and a large stained glass
rotunda in its foyer. It is among the few canal street factories in the "Black Country" that has been preserved. Wolverhampton's biggest public art display took place between July and September 2017;
Wolves in Wolves saw the installation of 30 wolf sculptures in the city centre and West Park, with the sculptures auctioned off to raise money for charity.
Exhibitions As its wealth and influence grew, Wolverhampton both took part in notable exhibitions and hosted them.
The Great Exhibition of 1851, at
The Crystal Palace, had examples of locks,
japanned ware,
enamel ware and
papier-mâché products all manufactured in Wolverhampton. Following successful exhibitions at Mechanics' Institutes in
Manchester and many northern towns, Wolverhampton held an exhibition that was the brain child of
George Wallis, an artist employed by the firm of Ryton and Walton. The exhibition was held in the Mechanics' Institute in Queen Street and showed fine art, furniture, and decorated trays, as well as a variety of ironwork, locks and steel toys. On 11 May 1869
The Earl Granville opened the Exhibition of Staffordshire Arts and Industry in a temporary building in the grounds of Molineux House. ==Geography==