Willenhall is a small Black Country town in Staffordshire to the east of Wolverhampton, historically and functionally part of the city; it is not administered by Wolverhampton Council solely in order to make that authority area smaller - and hence it is mostly administered by Walsall Council[1]. It is historically known for the manufacture of locks and keys, and is one of the few places within the United Kingdom that have been bypassed three times.
According to the 1821 Ordnance Survey map of Wolverhampton, the New Road through Willenhall did not exist, and the main route was via Wolverhampton Street and the rather wonderfully named Doctor's Piece. The present New Road is, however, shown on the 1835 Ordnance Survey Old Series map of the area, as it was built in that great pass of turnpike road building in the Wolverhampton area in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Indeed, one of the old tollhouses still exists on the route. Some sources give the date of opening of New Road as "around 1818"[2], which is probably a little too early given the contradictory mapping evidence.
In 1922, the A454 ran along the New Road through Willenhall town centre. However, by the early 1950s, it was very clear that the amount of traffic passing through the town was unacceptably high, and Willenhall required a bypass. The original planning for the bypass called for the Bilston Link Motorway from the planned M6 junction at Bentley Interchange to the A4123 southwest of Bilston, with a short spurmotorway to Portobello serving to complete the Willenhall Bypass.
After much deliberation, a start was made on the Willenhall Bypass (as an all-purpose road) in the early 1970s, and for a time the A454 was diverted down the new road (known as The Keyway) to the present B4484 junction. As a consequence, the road through Willenhall gained a new number of B4464. After many false starts, the A454 Black Country Route was finally completed in the early 1990s, and so the B4464 was extended eastwards, once again over the former A454 route, to M6 junction 10 at Bentley.
