WOLVERHAMPTON, a parish, in the county of STAFFORD, 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 townships 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 Wulframs 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,
tinder 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
A 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 defray r
ing the expense of which the inhabitants have subr
scribed £3500, the remainder tobe 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 ih'e
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 sdine
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.