Welcome to B-List Britain, an exclusive Metro Travel series celebrating unsung cities with Ben Aitken, the award-winning author of Shitty Breaks.
The aim is simple: to seek out the good stuff, uncover hidden gems, and demonstrate that anywhere (like anyone) can be interesting, if approached with the right attitude.
This week we’re in Wolverhampton…
On arriving in the ancient city of Wolverhampton, I went for a long, aimless wander, hoping to gain a sense of whether I’d done the right thing in coming on holiday here.
I ambled about for an hour in total, and in that time Liverpool and Leeds and Ludlow and Luton were all hinted at by the buildings.
Wolvo is one of those places that brings other places to my mind. A Georgian this. A Victorian that. A medieval the other. In short, the West Midlands city is well-stocked.
Like the rest of the region, it’s a place of many firsts. Home to the first automatic traffic lights. Pioneered the Heavy Metal scene, with bands like Black Sabbath. Birthplace of one of the world’s oldest professional football teams, Wolverhampton Wanderers.
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Then there’s the Chubb Building. Chubb are the lock-and-key people, if you didn’t know. They’ve been keeping things safe around here for centuries.
It’s a graceful structure – well-built, redbrick, bit of a poser – and it’s got a cushy job these days: housing a new indie cinema.
After making a note to catch a romcom later, I stopped at a café called Sassy for a cuppa. At a neighbouring table, a paramedic was sharing stories with the manager.
So-and-so kicked me in the groin when I tried to clear their airway. So-and-so tipped me a tenner while having a heart attack. That sort of thing.
Encouraged by his chattiness, I asked the paramedic what he reckoned the best thing to do in Wolverhampton was.
‘Leave,’ he said.
More B-List Britain: the UK's unsung cities
‘Oh, come on,’ I replied. ‘Imagine you had just one day left in the city. Before being exiled to West Bromwich or Dudley. And you had to do your favourite things. What would you do?’
He gave this some thought, then smiled, then laughed a bit, then said (seeing as I wanted to know), that West Park is lovely, the gallery is wonderful, and there’s a cracking Chinese on Queen Street.
The gallery was wonderful, for the record. I spent a happy hour there exploring its collection of Pop Art, a movement that took a pop at the canon by asking questions about what art could be.
The movement is best embodied by Andy Warhol and his can of soup. Wolverhampton Art Gallery snapped up a load of Warhols when they weren’t exactly fashionable. Canny acquisitions, you might say.
I went for dinner at an Indian restaurant called Bilash, which is just along from a recently renovated music venue called The Halls (that has already hosted the likes of Travis and Blur).
I had the Goan King Prawns, which were the size of local authorities and elevated with a dozen secret spices.
Better still was a pudding called Gajar Ka Halwa, which was a bit like sticky toffee pudding and carrot cake combined, which, as far as I’m concerned, is like combining Nigella Lawson and Romesh Ranganathan – i.e. a very good idea indeed.
I got a cab to The Mount, a characterful hotel on the fringe of the city, reckoned to be Wolverhampton’s finest.
There was a Christmas party in full swing. A window company, according to the receptionist. A few of them looked double-glazed, all right. I almost got yanked up onto the dance floor.
When a song by Slade came on, ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’, there was an almighty roar of approval. Slade were from around here, you see.
I couldn’t believe it when the receptionist told me that Slade were the biggest-selling band of the seventies.
I reckon Wolverhampton should make a bit more of Slade, as Liverpool wrings The Beatles for every penny.
My first stop the next morning was Wightwick Manor, a National Trust property just up the road from the hotel. It was a very Arts and Crafts sort of place.
There was William Morris wallpaper and tapestry wall hangings, and even the man’s ideas had been used as decoration.
One of William’s ideas that got me thinking went as follows: ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’
I read the words with some trepidation, knowing that if my partner got wind of them, I’d be out on my ear.
I took a tram down to Bilston, having been tipped off about the orange chips at Major’s.
When I asked the lad behind the frier what made the chips orange, he just shook his head, as if to warn me off that line of enquiry. No matter how the chips acquired their complexion, they were flippin’ tasty.
I trammed it back into town, then had the second half of my dinner at a place called The Yew Tree.
It’s a desi pub, which is essentially a mashup of public house and Indian restaurant, and my kind of merger.
Crisps and pakoras. Curry and football. Nuts and bhajis. Ketchup and chutney. Don’t mind if I do.
After a pint in The Lych Gate – which was cosy and avuncular – I headed out to Wolverhampton’s racecourse, which would be my final port of call.
It was a pretty big setup: a grandstand, a floodlit all-weather track, and about 50 bookies stood on pedestals alongside dazzling charts of likelihood.
Without thinking about it too much, I backed a horse called Probable, which was an outsider at 50/1.
I watched the race from the old-school grandstand: on my feet, leant against a railing, cradling a tea. Probable was evidently a misnomer, because the horse came last. That’ll teach me to back the underdog.
Over the course of an hour or so, I bet on five horses, won £7.50, and drank three cups of tea. I returned to the same bookie each time.
She was a nice lady, lived in the suburbs, hadn’t been into the centre of Wolves for yonks.
I told her about the theatre, Wightwick Manor, the gallery.
‘Look at you,’ she said, ‘telling someone from Wolverhampton to do themselves a favour and nip into Wolverhampton. Now, are you sure you want to put a fiver on Bruce Springsteen’s a Legend because it hasn’t finished a race for six years?’
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’
Ben Aitken is the author of Shitty Breaks: A Celebration of Unsung Cities.
Next week, he’s in Wrexham.
