From derelict to desirable: the former railway station that's become a go-to venue

Since then, the venue on Sun Street has been built up around the site of the station, with a large multi-purpose hall and adjacent car park available for use, and the venue has become a central place for every type of event.

Director of sales and development Danny Thompson has been a part of the venue since it opened and spoke about the evolution of Grand Station over the years.

He said: "When it first opened in 2013, it was originally focussed on being a wedding venue, and it's only in the last five or six years that we've become more focussed on corporate events, the larger conferences and dinners, white tie event, charity balls and other big events.

"It's just a large and empty space which can be used for anything, such as weddings, parties, balls and anything that people want to do and what we've tried to do is go along with what the market is and what people dictate is the need.

"The idea is that we'll keep evolving based on the client's needs and when we first started, it was predominantly for the Asian wedding market as I believe we're the largest venue in Wolverhampton to be able to do these events."

Mr Thompson said the venue had been able to cater for all types of weddings, from Muslim to Caribbean to African, while also looking at the different communities in Wolverhampton to cater for their needs.

He said the need to evolve was what drove the venue on, saying that sticking to what worked 10 years ago wouldn't work now.

He said: "It's very important that we continue to evolve as if we get stuck thinking that we're the same venue as 10 years ago, then we'll go completely wrong.

"At the moment in the events industry, there's a lot of venues closing down and businesses which are struggling, whereas one of the reasons we keep growing year on year is because of being able to evolve and change and amend products as we go along."

One of the biggest events to take place at Grand Station was Miss England, which Mr Thompson said was an amazing event and one which benefitted not just the venue, but the city as a whole.

He said: "It's an event which has been running for 90 years and had never been held in Wolverhampton before and this was the perfect opportunity to show the big cities that we can host events like this, with people travelling from all over the country.

"It was great as to had all the hotels in the area busy and the restaurants full of people, as thousands of people travelled here, was amazing, not just for us, but also for what it did for the local community.

"We will let people know about the restaurants and bars in the area as a lot of our events are two to three day events and finish around 6pm, so people are able to go into Wolverhampton and spend money and do things and that's an important thing for us to help local businesses."

Each event at Grand Station has a three stage process, from the sale team who work with clients and sign the contracts, to the planning team who work on logistics and plans, then to the operations team who coordinate and deliver the events.

Mr Thompson said there was a strong and large team which worked on more than 300 events a year and who delivered for what ever event was planned, while those working at the events were skilled with catering and the three bars at the venue.

He said it was that team which made Grand Station special for him, as well as keeping that local touch to it.

He said: "The history of this building is unique, but it's the team that makes it special as we have a brilliant, hard working team who are all local, as are the owners and the food, and the idea of this venue is to keep it going for the next 150 years.

"It's good to have that local base and be able to offer whatever it is that the customer needs and give the people of Wolverhampton somewhere to go to have these amazing parties, nights out, weddings and events.

"It shouldn't have to go through Birmingham for this sort of thing and, hopefully, we can continue to offer this for many years to come."