Around this has grown up the legend of a settler called Wolf who had been expelled from his clan and who is supposed to have made a clearing in the then luxuriant forest on the site of the present village centre.In 875 the hundreds (Honnschaften) and present suburbs of Flandersbach (Flatmarasbeki, i.e., Flattmar's brook) and Rützkausen (Hrotsteninghuson, i.e., the houses of Hrotse's people) are named in a description of the places owing tithes to Werden Abbey on the Ruhr.

In around 1100 the placename Wülfrath (Wolverothe) itself is at last mentioned in a document written in a monk's hand at the religious house at Kaiserswerth.

The boundaries are given in a deed of grant of the Emperor Henry VI dated 16 October 1165 as the courses of the Rhein, Ruhr and Düssel (Tussella) rivers.

The eastern boundary was the old highway of the "Kölnische Straße" (strata colonensis), which ran from the bridge over the Ruhr at Werden via Velbert and Wülfrath along the Düssel towards Cologne.

The centre of the mediaeval village was a demesne farm or manor (Mollmershof), which as part of the lordship of Hardenberg was sold to the Counts of Berg.

Possession of this manor, to which an extensive group of scattered farms belonged, particularly in the hundreds of Erbach and Püttbach, also gave control of the advowson of the church, that is, the right to appoint the priest.

Each of them had (and still has) a name as well as a house number: Auf'm Keller (1678), Hamels (1678), Melanders (1678), Op der Ley (about 1600 - refurbished 1911), Auf'm Haus (1678), Großer Klaus (1686 - rebuilt 1964), Kleiner Klaus (1678), Scholle (1678), Hinter'm Turm (1678), Jostenhaus (refurbished about 1738), Hechtsteinhaus (1678), Op de Trapp (1678) and Leonhards (rebuilt 1955).

These undertakings have been a decisive influence on the development of the town, and have remained the principal component of Wülfrath's industrial life until now.

A branch of the Ford works at Cologne was founded here, rising out of the coachwork company Josef Hebmueller Soehne, established 1889, and still extant as (Tedrive).

After 1840, the Wülfrath coat of arms, modelled on an old seal of the Lutheran Reformed municipality, was designed by the Düsseldorf heraldic and painter Wolfgang Pagenstecher.