Wolverhampton grew from a noblewoman's land grant into a Midlands industrial city
In 985 a king handed land to a woman called Wulfrun, and the settlement that grew there still carries her name. Wolverhampton went on to trade wool, forge locks, build more than 200 bicycle brands and, briefly, run the largest trolleybus network anywhere on Earth.
The city's name traces to Lady Wulfrun, who received lands at a place called Heantun from King Ethelred the Unready by royal charter in 985. Before the Norman Conquest the name appears only in forms like Heantune or Hamtun; her name was attached from 1070 onward. Locals are still called Wulfrunians. By the Domesday survey of 1086 it was a sizeable settlement of fifty households, and Henry III granted a charter for a Wednesday market on 4 February 1258.
Wool made its early fortune. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was reckoned one of the staple towns of the trade, which is why a woolpack sits on the coat of arms and why so many small central streets are called Fold. From the 16th century metalwork took over, especially locks, keys, iron and brass. There is even evidence that the first working Newcomen steam engine ran here in 1712.
Coal and iron deposits made Victorian Wolverhampton rich, though a young Princess Victoria, visiting in the 1830s, called it large and dirty. She came back in 1866 to unveil a statue of Prince Albert, her first public appearance since his funeral, passing under an arch built of coal, and was pleased enough to knight the mayor, John Morris. Between 1868 and 1975 more than 200 bicycle makers operated in the town, including Sunbeam and Rudge.
Transport experiments followed. Trolleybuses arrived in 1923, and for a short spell in 1930 the local system was the biggest in the world; the last one ran in 1967. Today the city of 263,700 people, formally a city only since 2001, is known for engineering, aerospace, Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux and the largest proportion of Sikhs in England, a legacy of Indian migration since the 1950s.
Source: Wolverhampton
