Couple celebrate first wedding at Bantock House

Corrinne Carpenter, née Wilde, has lived overlooking the house and park for more than a decade and jumped at the chance to get married there after discovering it was now possible.

The Grade II listed building was registered by Wolverhampton Council to host weddings earlier this year alongside the city’s archives and art gallery.

Corrinne, said: “From my apartment I have a complete view of the park – that is why I bought it.

“Over the years I have taken all my grandchildren there and we really have been there quite a lot. I know it inside out.

“To get married there was just wonderful. It has been a fairytale. It has been like a big dream.”

Corrinne, who comes from Gornal, married husband Steven Carpenter, originally from Bushbury, at the house in Finchfield on Saturday.

The couple have five children between them from past marriages and a total of seven grandchildren.

The ceremony was held in the house’s drawing room after which photographs were taken on the stairs of the Great Hall.

Corrinne’s daughter, Sarah Cox, aged 35, said: “The reaction from visitors to the museum was very lovely.

“They were saying ‘wow’ and how magical it was and were asking where the ceremony had been.

"Mum was going to have her wedding at the register office but the date she wanted was taken so they suggested the art gallery and then they said about Bantock House.

“Mum just gasped. We didn’t even know it was possible.”

Bantock House Museum was once the Wolverhampton home of Thomas and Mary Bantock and then their son and his wife, Baldwin and Kitty Bantock.

Scottish-born Thomas Bantock, a successful railway and canal agent, moved into what was then called New Merridale Farm in 1864.

Thomas became Mayor of Wolverhampton, as did his son, Baldwin, who left the property to his wife, Kitty, when he died in 1938, on the understanding that she bequeathed it to the town.

She outlived him by 16 years yet gave the house and park to Wolverhampton in 1938.

Having been a base for the local Home Guard during World War II, come peacetime, Wolverhampton Corporation turned the property into a museum, and the newly-named Bantock House Museum opened in April 1948.