12 George Street was built around 1790.  It became vacant in the 1990’s and deteriorated rapidly. The Trust was able to buy it in March 2006; work started in October 2006 and was completed at the end of May 2007.  An exhibition about the restoration and about other buildings at risk in the city of Wolverhampton has been on view at the Light House in the Chubb Building and in the Civic Centre and will be on at other venues early in 2008.  

An exhibition by the
City of Wolverhampton
Regenerating Buildings Preservation Trust

Early days

The Trust’s first project was 12 George Street between St John’s Square and Snow Hill. It has been carefully restored to three apartments with support and funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Heritage Economic Regeneration Scheme, Architectural Heritage Fund and Wolverhampton City Council.

12 George Street was built as part of a planned Georgian expansion to Wolverhampton. The purchaser of the plot was Benjamin Mander in 1790. The indenture of release contained a covenant which said that:“ the said Benjamin Mander his heirs or assigns shall and will within the space of six months from the date hereof stake out two yards in the front of the said small plots or parcels of land hereby granted and released to be from time to time for ever hereafter used as a common footway or part of the said Street leading from the said New Church into Dudley Road aforesaid” with “a wall not exceeding the height of three feet for the purposes of fixing palisades thereon to the front of the said land” also that he could build a house and that “any such messuage tenement or dwellinghouse when erected shall be of the height of twenty five feet and a half at least from the ground floor to the ceiling of the Garretts and Windows whereof shall be sashed and the house finished and completed in a handsome regular and workmanlike manner."

During the Second World War, the front rooms of the house were used as offices and it was converted wholly to office use in the early 1970’s, when Victorian ground floor windows were removed. It became vacant in the 1990’s and deteriorated as water got in, dry rot rampaged and pigeons took up residence. The Trust negotiated with the owner and eventually bought 12 George Street in March 2006. Work started in October 2006 and was completed at the end of May 2007.

12 George Street is for sale. Agent: Jonathan Nelson at Thomas Skidmore (telephone: 01902 421491).

Benjamin Mander

Benjamin was born in 1752 and his brother John in 1754. Their father Thomas had arrived in Wolverhampton, then a prosperous market town of 7,454 inhabitants, from Warwickshire in 1742 and set up as a baker and maltser. He married and inherited, through his wife Elizabeth Clemsons, 48 John’s Lane (later John’s Street) where the Clemsons had run a bakery business for many years.

Benjamin followed in his father’s footsteps as a baker. A trade directory of 1792, Roper’s Wolverhampton Trades and Occupations lists Benjamin under “Bakers and Confectioners” at 5 and 7 St John Street and his brother John under “Chemists and Druggists” at 34 and 35 Cock Street (now known as Victoria Street). This seems to suggest that Benjamin may not actually have lived at number 12. He may have built it with a view to renting it out as an investment. That same year, aged 40, Benjamin set up as a manufacturer of japanned ware and tin-plate work from the family bakery at 48 John’s Lane. Perhaps he was encouraged by Thomas Wightwick, one of the first japanners in Wolverhampton, who had sold him the land for 12 George Street two years earlier.

John’s Street and the site of the japanning and varnish works was cleared to make way for the Mander shopping centre. All that remains of John’s Street is Woolpack Street, the north-east entrance to the Mander centre, and a short section exiting the centre from the south-west onto Victoria Street. A memorial plaque to the men who fell in the Great War that once adorned the wall of the works is preserved at Wightwick Manor, built by Theodore Mander.

Thomas died when Benjamin was twelve and his widow married a Scottish Presbyterian called Charles Hunter, who turned the family to Nonconformity.

In 1772 the name of Benjamin Mander was added to the list of trustees of the John Street Unitarian Meeting House, where Reverend John Cole was minister. The archives show that his sons, Benjamin, born 2nd May 1779 and Charles, born 21 March 1780 were baptised by the Rev Cole at the John Street Presbyterian Chapel and presumably this was the same chapel. At this time there was a split over doctrine. The Rev. Cole leaned towards Unitarianism and John Mander, Benjamin’s brother, favoured the Calvinists. Although the Rev. Cole stood down, under pressure, the Unitarians in the congregation took control.Benjamin may have founded the Grey Pea Walk Independent Chapel in 1781, where he registered the births of his younger children. His step father, Charles Hunter and other members of the Mander family transferred their allegiance to it. Grey Pea Walk is now known as Temple Street and the chapel is no more, although there are two other former chapels.

Benjamin supported the Wolverhampton Flour and Bread Company, which in 1812 promoted the building of the Union Mill and Poor House as a charitable project, but was opposed by other millers and bakers, whose costs would be undercut by the new mill. It led to a court case and church bells rang when the courts found in favour of Benjamin. The Union Mill was sited next to the Birmingham Canal, but was demolished in the late 1980’s following an arson attack and all that remains is a warehouse with a date-stone of 1813 and a basin onto the canal.