Stafford Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- This article is about the town of Stafford, England. For other uses, see Stafford (disambiguation)
The town boasts a castle, a top-ranking house, a handful of historical and media notables, some exotic road traffic and an unusually soggy town centre.
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2 People 3 Economy 4 Nearby Places 5 External Links 6 Source |
History
Stafford means ford by a landing place. The original settlement was on an island in the middle of the marshes of the River Sow, a tributary of the Trent. There is still a large area of marshland adjacent to the town centre, which in both 1947 and 2000 saw floods. In the year 913 Stafford was fortified by Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, to keep out the Danes. Stafford Castle was built on a nearby hilltop late in the 11th century. It has been rebuilt twice since but now only 19th century ruins remain atop the impressive earthworks. In the main shopping street, Greengate Street, lies the Elizabethan Ancient High House, the largest timber-framed town house in England.
Night-time illumination creates a landmark for motorists on the M6 motorway, below.
People
Famous people from Stafford include the 17th century author of The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton and the 18th century playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was also the local MP. Also, the 1853 Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Sidney, was born in the town. More recently Stafford was the birthplace of Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey and where stand-up comedian Dave Gorman was brought up. Author Storm Constantine is a long-time resident. Ozzy Osbourne lived nearby. In the early 1900s, the village of Great Haywood near Stafford was home to the wife of famous Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien. He stayed with his wife, Edith, in her cottage in the village during the winter of 1916, and the surrounding areas were said to be the inspiration for his early works.
Also worthy of note is the city of Stoke on Trent near Stafford, birthplace of famous solo artist Robbie Williams. See Stoke on Trent for more information.
Economy
A major activity in the town since 1903 has been heavy electrical engineering, particularly producing power station transformers, exported around the world. The works have been successively owned by Siemens, English Electric, GEC, GEC Alsthom, Alstom and most recently Areva. Every so often a delivery takes to the road. Each transformer weighs several hundred tons and so a sort of road train is used. The weight is spread by a 160-wheel cradle, pulled by an 8-wheel drive FAUN Goliath tractor unit and pushed by two more.
The town of Uttoxeter near Stafford is home to the world headquarters of site excavation machinery specialists JCB (See Uttoxeter and JCB for more information).
This is an Article on Stafford. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Stafford Nearby Places
External Links
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