Wolverhampton's working history runs from Lady Wulfrun's wool grant to Ernest Bevin's forty-hour handshake — from the wool merchants whose money built St Peter's nave clerestory, to Edward Bird the japanning apprentice who became a Royal Academician, to Harry Inscoe who sat at his locksmith's bench for sixty years, to the young architects Lawrence Israel and Edward Lyons who won the Civic Hall competition aged twenty-two and twenty-five in what was their very first job, to John Baynton and John Brodie who were given a football by their headmaster and founded Wolverhampton Wanderers. These are the names the plaques missed.
Wolverhampton Art GalleryArt gallery in West Midlands, United Kingdom
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The Chubb BuildingsThe purpose-built lock-making factory on Railway Street (now Fryer Street), constructed in 1898 to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of the company's founding. Designed by architect C. H. M. Mileham (1837–1917). Capable of accommodating 350 workers. The triangular plan was designed so that every locksmith's bench had its own window. Harry Inscoe is photographed at his bench on 9 October 1918, having completed sixty years of continuous service. The factory operated until 1960; it is now a Grade II listed arts and media centre.
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Wolverhampton Station
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Express & StarThe newspaper offices on Queen Street, home of the Express and Star — one of Britain's last independent regional dailies. In 1874 Wolverhampton's first paper, the Conservative Evening Express, was launched. Thomas Graham (1841–1909), a Liberal councillor from Dunfermline, persuaded his friend Andrew Carnegie to back a rival: the Evening Star, launched in 1880. Carnegie bought the Star; within four years it had absorbed the Evening Express to become the Evening Express and Star, with premises on Queen Street. The Graham family retained ownership almost continuously thereafter.
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Mander CentreThe modern shopping centre built on the site of the Mander Brothers varnish and paint factory, which had occupied land in St John's Street since 1845. The company was founded by Charles Benjamin Mander and Samuel Small Mander. Under its chairman Geoffrey Mander (Liberal MP), Mander Brothers was in September 1932 the first British company to sign a forty-hour working week — a historic agreement negotiated with Ernest Bevin, then general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union. The factory also pioneered a Works Council, pension schemes, and a sickness benefit scheme.
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St Peter’s GardensThe former churchyard of St Peter's, now a public garden. It contains the Bargain Stone — a medieval holed stone through which wool-traders sealed deals by handshake — and a statue of Lady Wulfrun by Sir Charles Wheeler, unveiled in 1974. The gardens were the commercial heart of the medieval town: market transactions, the weekly wool fair, and the physical memory of the Deanery Borough.
