Introduction

The term “Victorian” is one of the most widely used descriptive words and also one of the most imprecise. We speak of “Victorian values”, “Victorian Architecture” and the progress of the “Victorians”. However, if we take Victorian to mean anything appertaining to the reign of Queen Victoria, we are speaking in terms of a period that lasted from 1837 to 1901: over sixty years. When the young queen came to the throne, the horse was still the main form of transport, although it was rapidly being superseded by the railway locomotive, modern medicine was still in its infancy and the French Revolution was still very much within living memory. It has been noted that the British ruling class heard the thud of the guillotine whenever they heard the cry “reform”. When the queen died, the first tentative steps towards heavier than air flight had been made, the motorcar was making its presence felt, Roentgen had developed X-Ray photography and the aged queen was captured on moving film. It is perhaps fitting that a monarch who gave her name to a 19th century age of such vitality and forward thinking should have died in the 20th century.

In 1901, despite the magnificence of the Edwardian Age, when the world’s richest nation was at last unashamed to show its wealth, the massive self-confidence of the Victorians was beginning to crack. Doubts, some moral, about the empire, competition from other nations such as Germany and the United States and increasing industrial unrest, all served to warn the far-sighted that all was not well. Therefore it is inaccurate to speak of Victorian without some qualification, for nothing in these years was static, as was to be expected over such a long and rapidly developing period.

The purpose of this book is to look at the Victorian heritage of Wolverhampton, its buildings, artefacts and art; in the main those remaining, but also those that only exist in memory and photograph or diagram.

When we began to write this book, we originally intended to stay rigidly within the artificial constraints of the modern Ring Road with occasional excursions outside. We imposed this restriction on ourselves to prevent the book becoming too unwieldy as ever more places were drawn in. However during the course of our researches we realised that our “excursions” outside were becoming increasingly frequent as we found that the work of this or that architect could be compared with a building outside our self-prescribed brief, or that a particular building was of such interest that it could not be passed by. The final result is that the main body of the work is therefore confined to the centre of the town, but the looseness of this description will soon become apparent to readers, especially in the sections on villas and housing.

Although when we visit a town that is new to us, we may admire buildings and may even have a copy of Pevsner with which to identify certain features, we tend to take for granted the buildings in our own town; buildings that we use every day we may not notice. We have used Wolverhampton library for more years than we care to remember and although we have always considered it an attractive building, had never looked at it closely until we came to write this book. It was only then that we began to appreciate its wealth of detail in terracotta, fine shaped windows, remarkably beautiful interior and warm attractive woodwork.

At the end of the book there are biographies of all the main architects, artists and craftsmen who either worked in or designed buildings in the town, together with a short glossary.