Description:The Grade II* listed Molineux Hotel, photographed in 1966. It is currently (2026) the home of Wolverhampton's City Archives. In the background the Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club's 'Molineux' ground is visible with floodlights and entrance gates.
Molineux House dates from around 1720 – 1750. The Molineux family remained in the house until 1856. The last owner, Charles Molineux, let the property. The tenant converted it into a hotel and pleasure grounds used for fetes and sports, in a manner considered obnoxious to some of the neighbourhood. In 1869, Mr Oliver Edgar McGregor, a local 'Ale & Porter Bottler', purchased the house, grounds and an adjacent field and proceeded to extensively improve the house and grounds adding a boating lake and sports facilities, including a bicycle racing track, open to the public for fetes and galas. The hotel was then described as 'first-class'. Within twelve months of opening the grounds it was stated that more than 25,000 people had entered for the purpose of recreation.
By 1884, the pool had been filled and was used as a football pitch. Wolverhampton Wanderers made it their home in 1889. They purchased the grounds by 1901 when local brewers, William Butler & Son purchased the building. Butler still owned the premises at the date of this photograph; however, the hotel soon went into decline exacerbated by the opening of the Ring-Road in 1969. It finally closed in 1979 and gradually became derelict. A fire in 2003 gutted the building. The Wolverhampton City Council purchased, rebuilt and renovated it, demolishing the Victorian left wing and replaced it with a purpose-built Archive storage block by 2009, when it became the Wolverhampton City Archives.