Pooley Country Park, Tamworth

Last week before talking to Tamworth Photographic club, I visited Pooley Country Park, which used to be a Mining Area. It was the first mine to generate its own electricity (from excess steam) in the early 1920s, and also the first to have pit head baths, which were opened in 1928. The Colliery eventually closed in 1965 and parts of the house, outbuildings and the colliery buildings had to be demolished due to mining subsidence. Now it is a patchwork of silver birches, other trees and pools with the Coventry Canal and boatyards along one side.

Tamworth

 Tamworth began as a Saxon settlement; Offa built a palace at Tamworth and regarded Tamworth as the capital of Mercia. It was burned by the Danes in 874 and rebuilt in 913 by Ethelfleada with a forified building surrounded by a ditch and an earth rampart. The Normans built a castle at Tamworth, which has stood guard over the town ever since. The present castle has display rooms from many of the different times in the castle history and its famous inhabitants including Robert Peel whose statue stands in front of the Market Hall.

The church of St. Editha  also dates from the Saxon time  though most of the church is mid- to late-14th-century and 15th-century work with some 19th-century additions.