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Wolverhampton in Stafford County England History and GeographyWOLVERHAMPTON, a parish comprising the market towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton, in the northern division of the hundred of SEISDON; the chapelries of Pelsall, Wednesfield, and Willenhall, in the southern division of the hundred of OFFLOW; and the township of Featherstone, Hatherton, Hilton, and Kinvaston, in the eastern division of the hundred of CUTTLESTONE, county of STAFFORD; and containing, according to the last census, 36,838 inhabitants, of which number 18,380 were in the town of Wolverhampton (the population of which has since greatly increased), 16 miles (S.) from Stafford, and 123 (N.W.) from London. This place, which is of considerable antiquity, was called 'Hanton,' or 'Hamton,' prior to the year 996, when Wulfrana, sister of King Edgar, and widow of Aldhelm, Duke of Northampton, founded a college here, in which she placed a dean and several prebendaries, or Secular canons, endowing it with so many privileges, that the town, in honour of Wulfrana, was called Wulfranis Hamton, of which its present appellation is a corruption. The college, under the same government, continued till the year 1200, when Petrus Blesensis, who was then dean, after fruitless attempts to reform the dissolute lives of the brethren, surrendered the establishment to Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury; and it was subsequently annexed by Edward IV. to the deanery of Windsor. In 1258, the town obtained from Henry III. the grant of a market and a fair, from which time no circumstance of historical importance occurs till 1590, when a considerable part of it was destroyed by a fire, which continued burning for five days. In the parliamentary war Charles I., accompanied by his sons, Charles, Prince of Wales, and James, Duke of York, visited Wolverhampton, where he was received with every demonstration of loyalty by the inhabitants, who, in aid of the royal cause, raised a liberal subscription, towards which Mr. Gough, ancestor of the learned antiquary of that name, contributed £1200. Prince Rupert, in 1645, fixed his head-quarters in the town, while the king was encamped at Bushbury; and, immediately after the battle of Naseby, Charles marched into it, and quitted the day following. The town is situated on an eminence, in a district abounding with mines of coal, iron, and limestone, and consists of several streets diverging from the marketplace (in the centre of which is a cast-iron pillar, forty-five feet high, supporting a gas lantern) to the several roads from which they take their names. Among the recent improvements effected, under the provisions of an act obtained about 1814, is a new entrance on the east from Bilston, which, by means of a street crossing the town, nearly in a direct line, communicates on the west with Salop-street, leading towards Shrewsbury. The houses are in general substantial and neatly built of brick, many of them being modern and handsome; but in the smaller streets are several dwellings of more ancient appearance: the town is irregularly paved, well lighted with gas, and supplied with water by sinking wells to a great depth in the rock on which it is built. A public subscription library was established in 1794, which contains more than five thousand volumes, and for which a neat and commodious building was erected in 1816, when a news-room was added: over the library is a suite of rooms in which assemblies and concerts, under the superintendence of the Harmonic Society, take place. A neat theatre, well arranged for the purpose, is opened occasionally: prior to its erection, the celebrated Mrs. Siddons, and her brother, J. P. Kemble, performed in the town hall, since taken down, where they first developed those talents which procured for them so distinguished a reputation. Races are held annually in August, and are well attended: the course is an extensive area near the town, on which an elegant stand has lately been erected. The manufacture of the finer steel ornaments, which was formerly carried on extensively, and brought to the highest perfection, in this town, has given place to the heavier articles of steel and iron, of which the principal are, smiths' and carpenters' tools of every description, files, nails, screws, gun-locks, hinges, steel-mills, and machinery; locks, for the making of which the town has long been celebrated; furnishing ironmongery and cabinet brasses, with every branch of the iron manufacture; and brass, tin, Pont-y-pool, and japanned wares, in great variety: there is also a large chemical laboratory. The Birmingham canal, which forms a junction with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal, passes close to the town, on the west and north, where it is joined by the Essington and Wyrley canal, which terminates here, and affords facility of conveyance to every part of the kingdom: fly-boats proceed daily for London, Liverpool, and Chester, from the wharfs at Walsall-street and Horsleyfield, and twice a week for Derby, Nottingham, and Hull. The market is on Wednesday; and the fair, which continues for three days, the first being for cattle, commences on the 10th of July. The town is within the jurisdiction of the county magistrates, who hold petty sessions for the north and south divisions. A court of requests, for the recovery of debts not exceeding £5, is held in the public office, Prince's-street, every fourth Friday, under an act passed in the 48th of George III.; the jurisdiction of which extends over Wolverhampton and Wednesfield, and the parishes of Brewood, Pattingham, Busbury, and Penn. The lord of the manor holds a court leet, at which two constables (one of them chosen by the dean) and other officers are annually appointed. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the jurisdiction of the royal peculiar court of Wolverhampton, and in the patronage of the Dean of Windsor, as incumbent of the ancient deanery of Wolverhampton. The church, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Peter, formerly collegiate, and one of the king's free chapels, to which many immunities were granted, is a spacious cruciform structure, partly in the early decorated, but principally in the later, style of English architecture, with a handsome square embattled tower rising from the centre, the upper part of which is a very fine specimen of the later style. The interior, with the exception of the chancel, which is modern, is generally of more ancient character; the piers and arches of the nave and transepts, if not of the early English, are of that style merging into the decorated; and the pulpit, of one entire stone, is richly embellished with sculpture. An octagonal font, of great antiquity, is supported on a shaft, the faces of which are embellished with the figures of St. Anthony, St. Paul, and St. Peter, in bas-relief, and is richly ornamented with bosses, flowers, and foliage. In the chancel are, a fine statue of brass, erected in honour of Admiral Sir Richard Leveson, who commanded, under Sir Francis Drake, against the Spanish Armada, and a monument to the memory of Col. John Lane, the protector of Charles I. after the battle of Worcester: in what was anciently the Lady chapel is an alabaster monument to John Lane and his wife, the former represented in armour. In the churchyard, which has been recently enclosed with a handsome iron palisade, is a column twenty feet high, divided into compartments, highly enriched with sculpture of various designs, supposed to be either of Saxon or Danish origin. Near its south-west corner is a large vault, thirty feet square, the roof of which is finely groined, and supported on one central pillar; the walls are three yards in thickness, and on both sides of the doorway are slight vestiges of sculpture; the interior is in good preservation. It appears to have been the basement story of some edifice, probably connected with the monastery of Wulfrana, the exact site of which has not been ascertained. The living of St. John's is a perpetual curacy, endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £300 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Earl of Stamford. The church is an elegant modern structure, in the Grecian style of architecture, with a handsome tower surmounted by a lofty and finely proportioned spire; the prevailing character is a mixture of the Ionic and Corinthian orders. A pleasing and appropriate effect is produced from the arrangement of the interior; the altar is ornamented with a good painting of the Descent from the Cross, by Barney, a native of the town. A new church, to be dedicated to St. George, is now being erected, towards defraying the expense of which the inhabitants have subscribed £3500, the remainder to be granted by the parliamentary commissioners: the dean having given up the right of first presentation, application is to be made for an act of parliament to dispose of it. There are places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, Wesleyan Methodists, Methodists of the New Connexion, Unitarians, and Roman Catholics. The free grammar school was founded, under letters patent of Henry VIII., in 1513, by Sir Stephen Jenyns, Knt., a native of this town, and lord mayor of London in 1508, who endowed it with estates in the parish of Rushoe, in the county of Worcester, producing an income, aided by other benefactions, of about £1170 per annum: the management, originally in the Master and Wardens of the Merchant Taylors' Company in London, is now, by a decree of the court of Chancery, vested in forty trustees, including the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and the two county members, for the time being. The head-master has a salary of £500, and the usher £200, per annum, with residences; and there are also writing, French and German, and drawing masters, who have, respectively, salaries of £84, £80, and £70, per annum. The school is open to all boys of the town; the present number on the foundation is one hundred and fifty. The building was erected, in 1713, by the Merchant Taylors' Company, who, on some disagreement with the inhabitants, subsequently petitioned the Lord Chancellor to be released from the governorship. Sir William Congreeve; John Abernethy, Esq.; and John Pearson, Esq., Advocate General of India, were educated at this school. The Blue-coat charity school, for thirty-six boys and thirty girls, of whom six of each are also clothed and maintained, is an ancient establishment of unknown origin: it has an endowment arising from a farm at Siesdon, tenements in the town, and funded property, purchased with accumulated benefactions, producing more than £240 per annum, and is further liberally supported by subscription: residences for the master and mistress are attached. Sunday schools, in connexion with the established church and the various dissenting congregations, have been established. A dispensary was instituted in 1821, and a handsome and commodious building was erected, by subscription, in 1826: it is under the direction of a committee, of which the Earl of Dudley is president; and its income, arising from bequests and annual subscriptions, is about £400 per annum. There are numerous charitable bequests for distribution among the poor; but one of the most praiseworthy institutions is the establishment of the 'Union Mill,' erected, in 1813, at an expense of £14,000, raised in shares, for the purpose of grinding corn for the poor on easy terms, and supplying them with cheap flour and bread. There is a medicinal spring near the town, at Cull Well, on the road to Wednesfield. From Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England 1831, courtesy of Databases 4 Sale |
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