In 2023 we submitted plans to regenerate Bilston Market on behalf of City of Wolverhampton Council. Working closely with traders, the Council and the wider community, we replaced the market's tired, end-of-life canopy with a new covered structure, refurbishing the market office building, and stitching the Indoor and Outdoor Markets together with a continuous public realm - all to secure the market's future as the beating heart of Bilston town centre.
“I’m absolutely blown away, it’s a historic day for Bilston… The traders absolutely love the new market and if they’re happy, then everyone should be – and I’m over the moon.”
- Councillor Stephen Simkins, City of Wolverhampton Council Leader
1,450m² of new covered trading space across 165 stalls
Bilston Market has traded on this site for over fifty years, but the buildings around it had reached the end of their working life. The existing canopy offered no real shelter and had become a magnet for anti-social behaviour, while the market office building no longer served its purpose. We’ve replaced the low canopy with a taller, more generous structure that gives the Outdoor Market genuine civic presence, refurbished the admin building to house new management offices, retail and public toilets, and resurfaced the trader car parks – creating 1,450m² of new covered trading space across 165 stalls.
Bilston has been a market town since the Middle Ages, when local metalworkers, artisans and traders first gathered here to sell buckles, boxes and gun locks. We haven’t tried to imitate that history directly, but we’ve tried to earn a place within it. A new Beacon and large-letter signage announce the market from the Black Country Route for the first time in decades, a continuous run of hard and soft landscaping finally links the Indoor and Outdoor Markets, and a new taxi drop-off opposite the bus station makes the whole site safer and easier to reach on foot, by bike, or by public transport.
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