Bed and breakfast availability
Tamworth b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Tamworth and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Tamworth, Staffordshire, possesses one of the two finest castles in Staffordshire — the other is at Tutbury. Owned now by the Corporation it was bought for £3,000 in 1897 as a memorial of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee — the castle was lived in for 700 years from its erection in Norman times. But Tamworth's history goes back further than that: as long ago as 757 Offa, the Anglo-Saxon King of Mercia, had a royal palace at Tamworth but no trace of it remains. In 913, Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, won a great battle against the Danes at Tamworth and to thwart a counter-attack built a stockade on a huge mound at the junction of the Rivers Tame and Anker. It was around this mound that Robert de Marmion, one of William the Conqueror's barons, began to build the fortress, much of which still stands today.

The Castle is, in fact, a mixture of Norman, Gothic, Tudor, Jacobean and early-l9th-century architecture. The walls of the keep, 10 ft thick at their base, and the solid Norman tower with its dungeon, were the work of the Marmions. To the Tudor period belongs the more domestic warden's lodge and the splendid banqueting hall with its great oak-mullioned window. In the state dining-room, in the north wing — which also houses the royal bed-chamber — is a frieze of 55 oak panels painted with the arms of the lords of the castle up to 1787. There is a haunted staircase and a long gallery which is now the main museum area, where a collection of coins from Offa's Tamworth mint can be seen.

The parish church, with the rare dedication to St Editha, has one unique feature. The square tower is topped by a spire on each corner and in the south-west corner is a double-spiral staircase. There are 101 steps in the one spiral, 106 in the other, so arranged that the floor of one is the roof of the other. Climbers of one spiral do not see climbers of the other until they both reach the top. One spiral ascends from an entrance in the churchyard, the other from inside the tower.

Tamworth Town Hall is one of the prettiest in the country, built in mellow red brick with arcades at ground level, large Jacobean windows and a high-pitched roof, the whole topped with a cupola. It was built in 1701 by Thomas Guy, then M.P. for the town, whose name lives on in Guy's Hospital, in Southwark.

Nearby cities: Birmingham

Nearby towns: Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Atherstone, Coleshill, Fazeley, Hinckley, Lichfield, Sutton Coldfield

Nearby villages: Alrewas, Appleby Magna, Austrey, Baxterley, Bentley, Chilcote, Clifton Campville, Coton in the Elms, Croxall, Curborough, Donisthorpe, Dordon, Drayton Bassett, Edingale, Elford, Four Oaks, Glascote, Grendon, Haselour, Hurley, Lea Marston, Mancetter, Measham, Middleton, Minworth, Nether Whitacre, Newton Regis, Norton juxta Twycros, Oldbury, Orton-on-the-Hill, Overseal, Polesworth, Ratcliffe, Sheepy, Shuttington, Thorpe Constantine, Warton, Weeford, Whitherley, Wilnecote, Wishaw, Wylde Green

Have you decided to visit Tamworth or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Tamworth bed and breakfast (a Tamworth B&B or Tamworth b and b)
• a Tamworth guesthouse
• a Tamworth hotel (or motel)
• a Tamworth self-catering establishment, or
• other Tamworth accommodation