Express & Star

Old Molineux: Theatre of dreams which witnessed golden glory

Through grit to glory... It would make a good motto for a football club, wouldn't it?

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A blow to Wolves – gale damage to the east stand at Molineux in January 1925.

And it would apply to Wolves, not just in modern times – although glory was elusive in the club's middling season just gone – but in the 1920s and 1930s when the club overcame misfortune to embark on an illustrious new era.

Flashback to Sunday, January 4, 1925, and things don't get much worse than having a stand blow down during a gale. But that's what happened at the "Molineux Grounds," as Wolves' home was called back in those days.

Yet in just seven years the club was not only enjoying promotion to the top flight, but saw the building of an iconic new stand which will still be fondly remembered by some older fans today.

Reporting on the loss of the stand in that gale which swept the region, the Express and Star ruefully noted that it had above it the "newly-erected Express and Star private telephone box."

The damage happened when the storm was at its fiercest just after 7.30am.

"The stand, which had been transferred to the north-east side of the grounds to make way for the new stand on the Waterloo Road side, is about 200 feet long, with a corrugated iron roof," the Star reported.