John, Paul, George, Ringo, Mick, Bobbie, Tom, Phil, Ethel and, of course, Edwin.

IT’S been famous for a long time now - and was once bigger than Birmingham after emerging from the Roman occupation.

 Tamworth’s been the royal seat of Saxon kings… a favourite port of call by sovereigns down the ages… home to Britain’s greatest 19th century prime minister and founder of the police force as well as the man who built Guy’s Hospital in London…

It gave its name to the first political manifesto in Britain… a pair of pretty famous pigs (the Tamworth Two)… and the most talked-about three-wheeler car the world has ever manufactured (Reliant Robin).

But few people who come to this historic centre of Staffordshire life realise that in the 1960s, Tamworth was on the high road of the biggest cultural revolution of the last century – pop music.

The town’s venues were bursting with every Top of the Pops’ names in British and world music history.

To be more precise the Assembly Roooms, built in 1889, became the music hall mecca for the emerging Merseybeat and other sounds.

And 1963 saw the town crowned as pop-orazzi paradise.

The year before a little unknown Shane Fenton (later re-incarnated as Alvin Stardust) brought his Fentons to the town centre venue but the following year saw The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, next up The Hollies, Brian Poole and the Tremoloes and finally in December, Decca’s hottest-ever property the Rolling Stones including a youthful pouting Jagger, all strut their stuff in Tamworth.

BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT

Rewind from pop to top of the pile as Mercia was the centre of Saxon England in the eighth century during the reign of King Offa (the man famous for that dyke) and Tamworth kept its grip on the seat of power until just before William the Conquerer became the last person to successfully invade our shores in any great numbers.

Since the days of the Norman Conquest, Tamworth got on with everyday life as a place where kings and queens of England wanted to visit and later saw Britain’s second biggest city decamped in a highly successful overspill settlement with ‘big brother’ Brum towards the end of the 20th century.

If location, location, location was important – at the confluence of the rivers Tame and Anker and with the old Roman A5 road leaving the town in two different counties straddling Staffordshire and Warwickshire – then Tamworth will ultimately be remembered for people, people, people when this Heart of England International Film Festival is just history itself.

CAPITAL FOLK

Never mind the royal lineage, let’s look at ordinary folk and the town’s most famous person.

Police founder, Tamworth MP from 1830-50 and highly-successful Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel came down from Bury in Lancashire with his parents and made Drayton Manor his home.

On November 28, 1843, a horse-drawn carriage, with Queen Victoria and consort Prince Albert aboard, rattled over the bridge to see her First Lord of the Treasury.

Fast forward to a visit recently by former Tory Home Secretary Lord Douglas Hurd, looking remarkably fit for 79, who gave a sparkling Royal Society of St George lecture at St Editha’s Church on the life of the man who brought us the Bobbies. He told his audience how the Queen viewed Drayton Manor as “the most comfortable home she’d been in”.

Lord Hurd, who also did stints as an influential Foreign Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary, paid Peel the ultimate compliment: “He was the greatest peacetime and most effective Prime Minister Britain has ever had.”

He introduced the first party political manifesto when he became prime minister in 1834 (called the Tamworth Manifesto) which paved the way for the modern Conservative party and most famously he repealed the Corn Laws – striking at the very heart of his own party membership but helping the workers put bread on the table and meat on their plates on Sundays.

He died tragically from injuries sustained four days after a temperamental horse threw him from the saddle on Constitution Hill near to Buckingham Palace in 1850. His death set off a wave of public sympathy and statues to him sprung up across the UK by public donation.

By the way, that bridge is still there today – unlike Sir Robert’s old home which was demolished in 1926.

The royal thoroughfare of yesteryear is now used by hundreds of thousands of fun-seekers heading for Drayton Manor theme park and the home of Thomas the Tank Engine.

For men and women of influence, look no further than Thomas Guy, who as a future MP for the town, founded the almshouses in Lower Gungate, Tamworth, in 1678. They were rebuilt in 1913.

He also commissioned Tamworth Town Hall in 1701, but then spectacularly fell out with the burghers of the day who wanted to replace him as MP.

He went off to London in a strop and made his real fortune with a fivefold profit on selling his South Sea Company shares before the bubble burst.

His stock, worth around £50,000, was sold for nearly £250,000, and he was able to use the money for the now internationally-famous home of medical teaching at Guy’s Hospital in London. In May 1721, he leased ground for the hospital’s construction and although the building had been finished, it was not open when he died in 1724.

He never came back to Tamworth and left a sting in his bequests to the town that its people should not be allowed to live in his almhouses – that barbed order still holds some force 300 years later.

WAR HEROES

Where else did the famous commoners lurk in Tamworth? Well, war played its part in elevating at least two men to greatness and notoriety.

The first hero, No 635 Private Samuel Parkes, was an extraordinary man who was born in ordinary circumstances in Wigginton – the son of Thomas and Lydia. He was baptised at St Editha’s Church in Tamworth on Christmas Eve, 1815 – the year of Waterloo.

He was buried 49 years later in an unmarked pauper’s grave at Brompton cemetery in London after a funeral service on November 19, 1864, at St George’s Church in Hanover Square.

But in between – well, there’s a derring-do story of a man credited with having TWO Victoria Crosses (one real and one a copy), being the oldest Crimean War VC winner, the first prisoner-of-war VC holder - but not the first person to collect the highest available award for gallantry to a Brit in the face of the enemy to have done a spot of ‘porridge’ in jail.

With the agricultural depression of 1830, mirroring a financial one a century later, Samuel – like many of his contemporaries – chose the Army as a career to save him from a life of poverty and boredom.

The labourer, known to his family back in Tamworth as George, enlisted in the 4th Queens Own Dragoons on July 30, 1831, aged – well no one’s quite sure whether it was 15, 16, 17 or 18 as his date and year of birth were always a subject of much debate – and he spent a quarter of a century fighting for king, queen and country.

The finest hour for this local son came on October 25, 1854 in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War when he was serving as an orderly to the regimental commanding officer, Colonel George Paget.

In the charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade at Balaclava, Trumpet-Major Hugh Crawford's horse fell, and threw him, and he lost his sword.

He was attacked by two Cossacks, when Private Parkes (whose own horse had been shot) saved his life, by putting himself between them and the Trumpet-Major, and driving them away with his swordsmanship.

In attempting to follow the Light Cavalry in the retreat, they were attacked by six Russians, whom Parkes kept at bay, and retired slowly, fighting, and defending the Trumpet-Major for some time, until deprived of his sword by a shot.

Parkes and Crawford were held as Russian prisoners for a year and a day until October 26, 1855 – which makes Parkes the very first prisoner-of-war VC.

The VC winner told others that he was taken to St Petersburg, where all were “well treated, and allowed eight pence a day each for food, which was very cheap.”

His Army career was chequered to say the least. He earned four good conduct badges, but he won and lost the first badge five times between 1838 and 1850 .

In addition, he spent a total of 67 days in Galway Jail in

1848-49 after a district court martial in Ireland. Although his offence is not catalogued in archives, it suggests he was imprisoned for being ‘drunk on duty’ – almost a hanging offence in those days!

His blemished record explains why Parkes was not awarded the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, which for the cavalry then required 20 years of irreproachable character.

In total, he was awarded four medals: the Victoria Cross, the Ghuznee Medal, the British Crimean Medal with three clasps (Alma, Balaclava, Sebastopol) and the Turkish Crimean Medal (British variety).

His VC medals, no one knows why he had two, were sold at various times over the next 150 years. His main one was bought at auction by the officers of the 4th Hussars and presented to the regiment on Balaclava Day 1954 to mark the centenary of the battle.

He served a total of 11 years with the 4th Light Dragoons in India, including the First Afghan War and in the Crimean War. Peacetime service with the 4th saw Parkes in Wales and Ireland as well as in England.

Sadly to this day, no known photograph of him exists but he does figure in a number of famous paintings depicting the Battle of Balaclava.

Chevalier Louis Desanges painted 50 VC winners between 1857 and 1862 , but only four of those depicted in the series were rankers.

Samuel Parkes is the only one of the entire 50 to illustrate a ranker saving another ranker, as opposed to a ranker saving an officer.

Parkes also appears in the watercolour ‘The Queen distributing the first Victoria Crosses in Hyde Park, June 26, 1857’ by G H Thomas which is in the British royal collection. Not much of him can be seen at the very far left, but he is shown (correctly) wearing the newly introduced dragoon uniform.

VC winners were also a popular subject for postcards and cigarette cards, but none showing Parkes is accurate. A Players cigarette card from their 1914 series ‘Victoria Cross’ (card no.5) shows him winning his VC still mounted on his horse – which of course he wasn’t as it had been shot from under him.

He was discharged from the Army on December 1, 1857 after 26 years and 58 days (minus his spell in prison and appointed a warder at Hampton Court, with a pension of 1s/1d as on out-pensioner of Chelsea Hospital.

A memorial stone was not placed on his London grave until May 1999 and a plaque put in Tamworth parish church (his mum and dad are buried in the graveyard outside) fittingly on Balaklava Day 2004.

Still not much to remember a VC hero who saved the life of the man in the charge of the Light Calavry Brigade.

No 2 local hero was Able Seaman Colin Grazier who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for the “outstanding bravery and steadfast devotion to duty in the face of danger” which he displayed on October 30, 1942 in action in the Mediterranean (see pages ?? ??).

ROYALTY AND HALL OF FAME

Tamworth’s history is interwoven with royal patronage since it began life as a Saxon village in Staffordshire.

King Offa of Mercia reigned from 755 to 796. He built a palace at Tamworth and it could be said that town was the capital of England. However it was sacked by the Danes in 874.

A wooden fort was constructed on the site of the current castle, designed to defend the town against further Danish invaders by Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians, the daughter of King Alfred the Great – the Wessex sovereign attributed with burning the cakes while he contemplated driving out the Danish invaders.

Tamworth was rebuilt in 913 by Ethelfleda, but the Danes attacked the town again in 943. The Normans built a castle at Tamworth – a fine example of a motte and bailey fortification – which for nearly 1,000 years has stood guard over the town with its ghosts and all.

In the Middle Ages Tamworth was a small market town. However the king gave it charters in 1319. Then in 1337 Tamworth was granted the right to hold two annual fairs.

In medieval times, Tamworth might have had a population of not much more than 1,000.

The town’s imposing St Editha’s Church, the oldest parts showing it dates back to a 12th century cruciform building, was rebuilt after the great fire of Tamworth in 1345.

Now it boasts a double spiral staircase – one of only two in the whole of Europe.

Queen Elizabeth I granted Tamworth another charter in 1560. In the 16th and 17th centuries, like all towns, it suffered from outbreaks of plague. The Black Death struck in 1563, 1579, 1597-98, 1606 and finally in 1626.

Tamworth Castle was a constant magnet for the royals – hosting visits from kings Henry I, Henry II, Edward II, James I and

Charles I. It was besieged by parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War in 1643. An order was issued for the castle to be destroyed but this was not carried out.

The castle was given to the town – after being bought at auction by Tamworth Council to mark Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897.

Social improvements to the fabric of the town saw pavements flagged in 1807, gaslight arrive in 1835, the Midland Railway route from Derby to Birmingham come to Tamworth in 1847, the first cemetery in 1876, a hospital in 1880 and infirmary (1903), the Assembly Rooms were built in 1889 and piped water supply was on tap before the end of the 19th century

In 1905 the town got its first library – now the Carnegie Centre – and was one of dozens of similar institutions built by the world’s richest man Andrew Carnegie, who made his money during the American Civil War, and pledged to get rid of it before he died. His most famous building, of course, was Carnegie Hall, the home of classical music.

He opened the libraries in the UK and America as an act of the charitable philanthropy. The next person to open a new Tamworth library, in the 1970s, was the then Education Secretary – one Margaret ‘Milk Snatcher’ Thatcher – now considered the greatest innovative, yet divisive, peacetime prime minister of the 20th century.

LIKE TOPSY IT JUST GREW AND GREW

Until 1889 Tamworth was partly in Warwickshire AND Staffordshire. In that year the boundary was changed so the town became located entirely in Staffordshire.

The first council houses in Tamworth were built in 1900. More were built in the 1920s and 1930s and after 1945. A full electricity supply did not arrive until 1924.

In 1901 Tamworth had a population of around 3,000 but it grew rapidly during the 20th century. By 1931 it had risen to some 7,000 and just after World War II, it was 13,000.

This figure remained static until the late 1960s when the Councillor Phil Dix-led major expansion plan was implemented.

Although not officially a ‘New Town’, Tamworth's overspill agreement with Birmingham resembled the development of many new towns.

Town boundaries were expanded to include the industrial area around Wilnecote to the south – with the area of Stonydelph created. The 1971 population hit 40,000; in 1981, 64,000; in 1991, 68,000 and in 2001, 74,000, meaning that the town's population had almost doubled within 30 years.

During its long history Tamworth has been a market town rather than an industrial centre, although manufacturers of agricultural machines and cars, plus papermaking and textiles, all figured in the town’s big employers in the 20th century.

The Ankerside shopping centre got another royal visitor when it opened in 1980. Queen Elizabeth II trod the specially-laid red brick road onto the manicured lawns of the Castle Pleasure Grounds to meet the great and the good of the town.

This day – apart from his OBE – was a climax to the career of Tamworth’s greatest 20th century politician, Phil Dix.

With a shuffling gait, this overweight politician had dragged Tamworth kicking and screaming into the 20th century. His Operation Overspill plan – which took the town’s population from 15,000 to today’s around 80,000 – was constantly the butt of crass jokes and countless attacks by the short-sighted.

He, along with his cousin Terry Dix at County Hall, Stafford, pushed Tamworth’s interests harder and further than any other politician before – in much the same way that Sir Robert Peel, Tamworth’s most famous member of parliament, put country before his political party. It cost him his premiership in 1846.

Phil Dix got one minute’s silence at a council cabinet meeting when he died in October 2008 plus a memorial service. He should have died as Sir Phil Dix – the gentlest knight, who like a giant piece of seaside rock, had the letters Tamworth stamped right through him.

TRANSPORTS OF DELIGHT

Transport – with the rivers Tame and Anker coursing through the town – set Tamworth on its way.

Later it became a hub of the canal network, with the Coventry Canal and the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal being built through the town.

That famous old Watling Street, which split the town in two, played its part, too. The A5 London to Anglesey old Roman road kept the town as a transport hub throughout history.

Queen Boudicca is thoufgh to come to her end close to the town after Roman soldiers cut off her retreat by the river Anker and there are links with Dick Turpin and highwaymen who used to use the ancient Four Counties coaching inn as an opportunity to evade capture – as each room was reputed to be in the different counties of Staffordshire. Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire (partially, but not wholly true I’m afraid)

Bringing it right up to date, in July 1995 the £26m A5 bypass of Fazeley, Two Gates and Wilnecote fast-tracked the town’s motorists into a new era.

This was further extended to meet the M6 Toll and A38 in 2005 with the road's official name of Thomas Guy Way (quite fitting for a man who ultimately did a runner from the town).

Three-wheeler transport, however, made Tamworth REALLY famous – in the shape of the bizarre Reliant Robin car which became a favourite of (you’ve guessed it) royalty.

And everybody from Princess Anne to Roy Orbison – through comic actor Norman Wisdom, actress Rita Tushingham, Mike McGear, of the pop group The Scaffold and incidentally yer actual Sir Paul McCartney's brother, Bond actor George Lazenby, magician David Nixon, Dec Cluskey of The Bachelors, BBC commentator Stuart Hall, wrestler Mick McManus, ITV newsreader Leonard Parkin, TV show host Noel Edmonds, world racing champ Graham Hill, sports presenter Dickie Davies, comedian Ken Dodd, Coronation Street actor William Roach, biker Barry Sheen, Emmerdale star Patrick Mower, Keith Emerson and TV sleuth Roger Cook – all OWNED a Reliant.

The Princess Royal loves ‘em so much, she’s had EIGHT Scimitars alone – let alone a Kitten.

But the most famous owner is TV’s Del Boy himself – actor David Jason’s Only Fools and Horses’ company transport for Trotters’ Independent empire is a Reliant Regal.

That bright yellow van shines out like a beacon from the television screens and everyone has loved that quirky Kettlebrook-born car.

The Reliant Motor Company, was formed in 1935 when Tom Williams decided to build his own three wheeled vehicle in his back garden at Kettlebrook. In 1973 Reliant introduced the most famous of their three wheelers, The Robin.

Reliant production was based in Two Gates at Tamworth for 65 years, until December 1998 when the factory was closed for the last time and production moved to a new purpose built factory at Burntwood.

The only reference to those haycon Reliant days now, as you drive along the old A5, is new housing on both sides of the road with street names like Tom Williams Way.

BUTCH AND SUNDANCE

Before Swine Flu descended on the globe, a pair of pigs called the Tamworth Two were the famous porkers in town.

The fiesty four-legged beauties escaped while being unloaded from a lorry at an abattoir in the Wiltshire town of Malmesbury in January 1998.

The pigs (later named Butch and Sundance after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) were on the run for over a week, and the search for them caused a huge media sensation, as well as immense public interest, both in Britain and abroad.

Butch (a sow) and Sundance (a boar) were sister and brother Tamworth pigs. Just after they were unloaded from the truck, the pair escaped by squeezing through a fence, then swimming across the River Avon.

They spent most of their week of freedom in a dense thicket near Tetbury Hill, their owner, Arnoldo Dijulio, said he still intended to send the pair to slaughter should they be recaptured.

After making this statement, Dijulio was offered large sums of money by the media and animal lovers to save them from the dinner table. Eventually, the Daily Mail newspaper bought the pigs from Dijulio in return for exclusive rights to their story.

Butch was eventually captured first, when she and Sundance were spotted foraging in the garden of a local couple, Harold and Mary Clarke. Sundance escaped into the thicket once again, but was flushed out the next day by two springer spaniels, and tranquilised with a dart gun. He was taken to a veterinary surgery to recover over the weekend.

The two pigs now live – courtesy of the Daily Mail – at the Rare Breeds Centre, an animal sanctuary near Ashford in Kent.

In 2003, the BBC produced and broadcast a 60 minute TV movie called The Legend of the Tamworth Two.

The Tamworth pig originated in Ireland and was known as the 'Irish Grazer'. While in Ireland in 1809, Sir Robert Peel was so impressed by the breed that three years later he imported several to his Drayton Manor estate at Tamworth. Much of the improvement of the breed took place in Staffordshire.

MUSICAL MECCA OR DECCA?

The December ’63 date with Decca’s Rolling Stones Decca’s kick-started an era when the likes of Al Stewart, the Beverley Sisters, Robert Plant, Noddy Holder, Genesis, Supertramp, Hawkwind, Freddie and the Dreamers, Gordon Giltrap and Medicine Head all played the district.

Even Edwin Starr (Charles Edwin Hatcher) did his first UK tour gig at the Foseco Sports and Social Club in 1968 and later settled in Polesworth while Bayley Alexander Cook – lead singer of Tamworth rock band Wolfsbane – went on to be Blaze Bayley and lead vocalist of none other than Iron Maiden in a five-year stint which saw his single Futureal voted one of group’s most popular songs of all time.

After splitting with the group, he reformed his old band and went back on the road again.

So from country capital to the centre of pop’s Sixties’ surge to the movie-making capital of the UK – Tamworth’s come a long way in 1,500 years.

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