The Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground, opened in November 2005, is a part two-storey building which measures 72m x 16m, has a curved roof and balcony areas overlooking five pitches.

  Built at an overall site cost of £4.6million, the building includes changing rooms (11 in total), medical and physiotherapy facilities, gymnasium, hydro-therapy pool, kitchen and dining room, players' lounge, meeting rooms, academy study centre and administration offices.

  The building is the permanent base for the professional squad and academy players aged 16 to 18 years, for day-to-day training purposes, and for the club's academy games programme. It replaced the temporary changing facilities which had been home to the first team squad since 2002.

  The new building complements Wolves' £750,000 indoor dome arena, which opened in October 2002 at Aldersley Sports Village, where the academy teams - ranging from under eights to under 16s - train on a nightly basis.

  The first team began training at the Compton Park site in the summer of 1997, with a long term lease being acquired from the local authority in 2001.

  Although the pitches were acknowledged to be of a high quality, the club had never had a permanent home on the site. Instead, players had, for three years, used a combination of portakabins and the neighbouring Wolverhampton Lawn Tennis and Squash Club for changing, gym, dining and media purposes. Before this the squad commuted from Molineux.

Prior to Compton, Wolves trained for two years at Lucas (now Goodrich) on the Stafford Road and Wombourne Hockey Club before that. The only other training facility that was owned by Wolves was Castlecroft, a floodlit ground which was opened in September 1956 by Sir Stanley Rous, secretary of the Football Association. It was sold during the late 1980s and was developed to become a Rugby Football Union Centre of Excellence.

Wolverhampton-based ACP, who designed the redevelopment of Molineux Stadium, were appointed as architects for the Compton Park project and Lichfield-based Linford Group have undertaken the construction work. The project managers were Drivers Jonas, based in London.

Eighty per cent of the subcontractors were Midland-based companies. They included:

Ibstock, Aldridge - bricks (55,000 in total)

Tarmac, Wolverhampton - breezeblocks

McPhillips Civil Engineering, Telford - groundworks

Chamois, Wolverhampton - kitchen/office fittings

Francis Catering, Kingswinford - kitchen equipment

Brintons, Kidderminster - carpet (exclusively designed for Wolves)

H&R Johnson, Stoke - tiles (white with a special gold and black inlay)

Couch Perry Wilkes, Yardley, Birmingham - mechanical and electrical engineering

Hills, Walsall - Electrics

The most far-flung supplier was SwimEx of New Jersey who provided the hydro-therapy pool.Wolves are one of only a handful of English clubs to own such apparatus. The SwimEx, or endless pool, is commonly used by professional sports clubs in the USA.

Picture gallery coming soon.

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