Whitmore Reans - Today

Today

The areas population displays its recent history of immigration in the diversity of its residents. There are English, Afro-Caribbean, Asian, Polish, Kurdish, African, Irish & many other ethnicities residing in Whitmore Reans. It also has a small number of student residents who reside at the nearby university campus on Waterloo Road, and in private lets dotted throughout the area. Historically, Whitmore Reans was considered to be quite a genteel part of Wolverhampton, being located next to the picturesque West Park. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the area declined sharply, and while the last 20 years has seen some of the older housing stock brought up to date it is still home to some of the lowest social grades in the City.

Since 1889, Whitmore Reans has been dominated by the Wolverhampton Wanderers football ground, Molineux Stadium, which stands on the eastern side of Waterloo Road. However, all signs of the original stadium disappeared during the first half of the 20th century and the oldest part of the current stadium was built in 1978.

In 2000, as part of the regeneration, The Newhampton Arts Centre, a community arts centre was developed with lottery funding on the site of the old municipal grammar school and provides a venue for a culturally diverse range of arts activities.

Whitmore Reans has a shopping arcade which replaced some of the terraced housing called 'The Avion Centre', which has several shops, a Post Office, Three Cooks bakery, take-aways and a branch of the Lloyds TSB bank. There is also a library, located just outside of the Avion Centre.

New Hampton Road East and New Hampton Road West (which form the boundary between the Park and St Peter's wards) are secondary roads, but form the main route through Whitmore Reans. At the junction of the New Hampton Roads with Hunter and Clifford streets are several more shops, including the Sugar & Spice Asian catering store, the WV6 Internet Cafe, Burns + Dudgon Ltd electricians, The Fish Inn fish and chip shop, Mittu Jewellers, Jhoots Pharmacy, K. Ram & Sons convenience store, P.H. Services (appliance repairs etc.) and a branch of the charity Samaritans. On the corner of Hunter Street and St. Andrews Close is the Pak Continental convenience store.

Whitmore Reans is often in the press today for all the wrong reasons - gang warfare, violence and murder seem to be reported on all too much in the local press.

In 2005, Wolverhampton City Council investigated the Farndale estate, built on land formerly occupied by the Courtaulds factory. It was discovered that soil in the gardens of a small number of properties were contaminated with high levels of carbon disulphide, a chemical used in the manufacture of rayon. As a result of the investigation, and work alongside Akzo Nobel (the company who bought out Courtaulds in 1998), four vacant terraced properties in Welbury Gardens were demolished.

West Midlands Police have a base in Whitmore Reans at Staveley House on Great Hampton Street. The Park and St Peter's neighbourhood policing teams are based there and work from out of the building, although it is not open to the public, apart from for specific police surgeries.

One of the officers based at Staveley House, PCSO Lee Haynes, regularly tweets about policing in the area on the social networking site Twitter (@pcso31115wmp).

The Park and St Peter's neighbourhood policing teams regularly feedback policing news to local residents via a dedicated Facebook group called "Wolverhampton Police in Whitmore Reans".