1973 Demolition Year For The Market Buildings

A Memory of Wolverhampton.

I arrived in Wolverhampton when demolition of the market buildings was under way. The buildings in front of the church (in the photo) must have already been long gone, but the buildings on the side of the new ring road were being knocked down. They were nice red brick buildings and had pineapples at intervals along the edge of the roof and arched entrances. Such a pity those lovely buildings were removed to make way for cars to park. I was attending the art college on the other side of the ring road which overlooked the Molineaux football pitch. The players could be seen training on the pitch from the top of the building. I can also remember the St Peter's graveyard being cleared of skeletons to prepare the plot for development, which could also be seen from the other side of the college building looking across the ring road.

I stayed at first with a family who lived at the bottom of Compton Road. The father of the family told me that he was the first on the scene when the drummer of Slade crashed his sports car. He was able to give him life-saving first aid until the ambulance arrived.

I bought an awful old bicycle at Skidmore's auction rooms, and had to buy a lot of new bits for it at a shop on the edge of the town centre. The kind old fella in the shop helped me fit all the new parts. It was a good bike but had no gears.

There was an old Sikh bloke who used to feed the pigeons outside the Art Gallery. He was so old he could not tie his turban and it was always dangling in bits. He seemed very serene. One of the students at the college made a screen print of him feeding the birds.

I was impressed by the variety of colours the terraced houses by the Molineaux had been painted by the then new Asian immigrants (probably all now demolished). I had not seen anything like that before. Mrs Preece had a second-hand clothiers in the same terrace. She sold old hobnail boots with holes in the soles.

There was a lovely old shop somewhere near the station that sold tea loose and coffee freshly roasted. The interior was entirely original and in the window were old photos of ancient mandarin Chinese. It was called W Snapes (or similar).

The road leaving Wolverhampton up to Wednesbury (Bilston?) was the grottiest street I had ever seen in my life. So much smut from factories had covered everything in soot. It was the same when you came in on the railway, everything extremely sooty.

In the Molineaux pub by the football ground there were loads of old photos of the old Wolves football teams. There was another pub at the top end of Compton Road, the walls of which were covered in pictures of racing pigeons. It was a pigeon fancies' pub.

I once went to see the wrestling at the Town Hall. Top of the bill was "Gorgeous George" a tall blond bloke, but everybody booed him because he was the "baddie". I was amazed to see a local bloke who was a lecturer at one of the colleges bounce into the ring in his wrestling trunks. I had no idea he was a wrestler or how hairy he was without his shirt on! I think he won his bout.

Other shops I remember: Beatties, Owen Owen, Midland Educational, Macfisheries, The Bull in a China Shop, all fine shops; the Mander Centre, the Wulfrun Centre.

One of the local girls introduced me to Pork Scratchings. Pork fat makes me sick so I only ate one out of politeness but felt sick afterwards. Nowadays Pork Scratchings are popular "down south".

The Goodyear Zeppelin was frequently seen or heard (if you happened to be indoors). I think it was based at an airfield just outside of Wolverhampton past the Wergs. Sometimes it flew extremely low.

There was a park at the top end of Tettenhall Road which was very well kept. In the park was an old Victorian glasshouse with an aviary. I was very impressed with the exotic and colourful Toucans that were kept there. Not what you would expect to see in a place like Wolves.

I remember seeing Barry Lydon, Slade in Flame and The Man Who Fell to Earth at local cinemas.

I think it was 1975 when there was a long drought. It was a hard time for the firemen, who were constantly being called out to quench fires. I remember taking a trip from Wolves to Cannock Chase and seeing three fires along the roadside on the way which were unattended. The ground was so dry that even a bit of broken glass could start a fire. I remember the day the rain broke the drought. It was monsoon style heavy rain that I had never experienced. The weather returned to normal after that.

I also remember traveling through West Bromwich past a giant steel plant at night and seeing it all lit up with the furnaces glowing and smoking - a fantastic sight in the days when this country had state-owned nationalised industries that made money for the people of this country and provided real jobs for working class people. At that time Wolverhampton still had a motorcycle manufacturer.

Just some of the things I remember about Wolverhampton in the mid-Seventies.