The Victoria History of the Counties of England. A History of the County of Stafford: Volume XII, Tamworth and Drayton Bassett

Abstract

The website of The Victoria County History claims that the publication series ‘is one of the world’s longest-running research projects, exploring England’s rich local history’. Managed by the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, since 1899 large numbers of detailed, well-researched and descriptive ‘Red Books’ have provided starting points for anyone interested in local history. The success of the series depends on alliances of university history departments, county archives and independent scholars. Staffordshire is one county where this coalition has been particularly successful. Since 1993, a partnership between Staffordshire County Council and Keele University has resulted in the publication of five volumes researched and authored by Nigel Tringham. This volume covers Tamworth (the name comes from the river – the Tame – an Indo-European word meaning ‘flow’) and Drayton Bassett. There are also sections on individual settlements including Glascote, Fazeley, Hopwas and Wilnecote, each of which has a distinctive history. The book’s themes are similar to those in other county histories. Each area contains an introduction (including population and communications and previous histories, where relevant) and sections on settlement, landownership, economic history, local government, social history and religious history. In Tamworth’s case, the castle, the town’s most historic building, alongside St Editha’s church, has a segment to itself. Tamworth became an administrative centre under the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and in 913, under Queen Æthelflæd, a burh or fortified settlement. The castle was built after the Norman Conquest and Tamworth developed as a market town. Canal development enabled Robert Peel the elder to turn Fazeley into a cotton manufacturing centre in the 1790s. His son, also called Robert, the MP for Tamworth and future prime minister, built Drayton Bassett mansion in 1835 (largely demolished in 1926). The site became an amusement park in 1950, now known as Drayton Manor Park. Glascote and Wilnecote emerged as centres for extracting coal and clay in the early nineteenth century and in the twentieth century, the Tamworth area became home to the Reliant Motor Company, which manufactured the four-wheel Scimitar sports car (1964) and three-wheel Robin (1973). Tamworth’s skyline is dominated by six tower blocks which are physical manifestations of population growth in the 1960s to house people from Birmingham. Despite redevelopment, Tamworth retains a medieval, early modern and nineteenth-century core, with many fascinating buildings, but physically much of the townscape contains retail outlets and council and private estates built since the late twentieth century. There are many human stories. One relates to Bruno Hamel, a refugee from Revolutionary France in the 1790s who established a dynasty of artists, manufacturers and mayors. The Notes on Sources (xivxvii) is especially helpful to the researcher. This