26 pictures provide fascinating insight into a long-gone Wolverhampton community
It looks like a scene from an early episode of Coronation Street.
An elderly man takes a drag on his cigarette as he waits patiently for a haircut. A couple of old boys smile for the camera in the bookies’. Some young children play in the street. under the watchful eye of a neighbour on the doorstep.
These pictures were taken by graphic design student George Foster circa 1973-74 and capture the last days of a tight-knit community which was about to disappear forever.
George developed a special interest in photography, and began taking pictures of the working-class communities around Wolverhampton.
As Wolverhampton continues to change, with a fresh drive to bring new housing, it is worth reminding ourselves on how the city used to be. Back in the early 1970s the city was being transformed as better roads were built to accommodate the new age of the car.
George spent time chronicling the final days of North Street before the bulldozers moved in.
By the time he toured the area with his camera, it had already been split in two by the town’s new ring road. The new Polytechnic art block, where George was a student, is just visible in the background of one picture. In the years that followed, the narrow streets, Victorian terraces and smoky shops that dominated the area were swept away by a massive redevelopment which saw the John Ireland Stand – now the Steve Bull Stand – created at Molineux, and the eastern side of the street gradually being dominated by what is now Wolverhampton University.
In 1973 glam-rockers Slade may have been flying the flag for Wolverhampton in the pop charts, but this was a community still very much rooted in an earlier era, with cramped, dimly lit shops, and old-fashioned, modestly furnished homes.
“I think. North Street was due to be redeveloped and you can see some of the houses and shops were already on their last legs, with some already boarded up,” says George, who now lives in Monmouthshire.
