The Heritage Lottery Fund granted nearly £60,000 in June this year for the digitisation of the Express and Star’s photographic archive. The Star was founded in 1880 as a liberal news paper and was joined with the conservative Express (founded 1874)  in 1889 under Andrew Carnegie, so the the archive contains over a hundred years of Wolverhampton’s history. Once digitised, will be of even greater value to researchers than it is already.

The Molineux Building, in which the Archives are now housed, is itself of historical interest. It was built for the Molineux family over three hundred years ago and became a hotel in the 1870s – the Oak Room was once used as changing room by the town footballers. It was derelict for thirty years from 1979 but, after an arson attack in 2003, it was bought and later restored by the City Council.