1919 – George Tarver and Son, Gents Outfitters
Just in case you have any doubts over whether pupils actually dressed this way… the above picture was taken at Burton Grammar School at around the same time.
1922 – Baileys Ltd, Confectioner
1922 – Joseph Harrison, Household Removals and Storage
1922 – Heape and Company, House Furnishers
1922 – Co-operative Society Ltd, General Supplies
1922- Bates and Sons, Wholesale and Retail
1922 – Morecrofts, Auto sales
1934 – Lobbs Limited, Ranges and Grates
1934 – S.W. Stone, Radio and Sound Engineer
1935 – Bindleys Ltd, Builders and Furnishings Ironmonger / Sports Shop
1936 – Bindleys Ltd, Builders and Furnishings Ironmonger / Sports Shop
1937 – Parker and Son, Printers and writing supplies
1939 – Tarvers Limited, School Outfitting Specialists
1939 – A. Jackson, Toy Shop
1945 – Ellis and Son, School Wear
1945 – A. Jackson’s, Toys, Fancy Goods, Fishing Tackle
1945 – Raleigh Bicycles, Cycles
1945 – Tarvers Limited, Gents Outfitters
1950 – Sharp Bros. and Knight Ltd, Joinery
1954 – Ellis and Son, Gents Outfitters
1954 – William Howarth, Shoes
Burton in the English Civil War
The English Civil War started in 1642 when Charles I (pictured) raised his royal standard in Nottingham. England was split between those that supported the King and those that supported Parliament. In the case of Burton, support was fairly strongly parliamentarian. One of the most prominent Burton paliamentarian was Daniel Watson of Nether Hall. Before the outbreak of the civil war, he was a lawyer but he became a captain of dragoons in the Derbyshire cavalry.
Burton’s allegiance was largely a result of its puritan following. There was some unrest in the town at the outset of the war with rumours of gunpowder being hoarded to support rebellion. Although investigations by Lord Paget concluded that this was unfounded, in 1643, there was a large explosion in Saint Modwen’s church in the Market Place which destroyed the roof and blew out the windows.
Lord Paget, Burton’s most senior figure, was clearly undecided on where his loyalties should lie. Initially, in 1642, he declared support for Parliament but in June of the same year, he switched allegiance to the King. In September 1644, he reverted back to supporting parliament, clearly trying to hedge his bets in his own interest
With its highly strategic river crossing that was noted at the time as “the chief passage from South to the North”, and situated between parliamentary Stafford and Derby and royalist Lichfield, Tutbury, and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Burton was destined to be fought over throughout the civil war and lacking walls or natural defences, it changed hands many times.
Burton was the rendezvous for the royalist forces of the Earl of Chesterfield and his son Ferdinando Stanhope late in 1642, but the establishment of a parliamentarian garrison at Derby brought Burton to the attention of the conservative parliamentarian Sir John Gell and the rest of the Derbyshire county committee. In February 1643 Gell placed an artillery company in Burton under Major Johannes Molanus, a Dutchman who had actually come to England to assist with drainage projects in Lincolnshire. The garrison withdrew later the same month with orders to support an attack on the royalist stronghold of Newark in Nottinghamshire.
After capturing Lichfield for the king at the end of April 1643, Prince Rupert also placed a garrison at Burton, but it was promptly driven out by the forces of Gell and Lord Grey of Groby, commander-in-chief of the East Midlands Association. They installed Captain Thomas Sanders with a garrison of 200 foot, 60 dragoons, and one cannon drawn from the forces of Derbyshire. Sanders quickly deserted Gell’s command and placed himself and his troops under another parliamentarian officer, Col. Richard Houghton, and the Staffordshire county committee. Sanders was more radical than Gell, and may have feared that his appointment with only a small force in poorly defended Burton was Gell’s way of removing a potential rival.
On 4th July, 1643, that garrison was stormed in what was probably the most famous local battle of the war – ‘The Battle of the Bridge’. An army under Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, was commanded by Thomas Tyldesley (pictured), a supporter of Charles I and a Royalist commander from Lancashire, at the time having the rank of Colonel, led a cavalry charge across the bridge to attack Burton. It was a very bloody confrontation in which the church was damaged and the town was, according to Gell, “most miserably plundered and destroyed”. At the end of the battle, so much booty was taken that the Queen, who witnessed the battle, recorded that her soldiers “could not well march with their swollen bundles”.
After the battle, Burton became an important Roundhead stronghold and, largely because of the success of this attack against the odds, Thomas Tyldesley was knighted. A plaque to commemorate the event was erected on the replacement (current) bridge by the Burton Civic Society in 1993. It is still there today but goes largely unnoticed.
The royalists remained in control for the next six months and fortified the bridge, but were again driven out by Gell’s troops in January 1644. No garrison appears to have been established, and Burton was soon again under royalist control, although it was attacked and ‘plundered’ in a parliamentarian raid in April 1644.
The King’s forces from Lichfield were quartered in the town in July 1644 but they were driven out by Gell’s troops. A fresh parliamentary garrison of both Derbyshire and Staffordshire troops was installed in the town in November 1644, but by February 1645 Burton was once more under royalist control, and it was there that Charles I made his headquarters briefly at the end of May 1645. It was firmly and finally under parliamentarian control by early 1646, when the town contributed both money and beer to the parliamentarian forces besieging Tutbury and Lichfield.
A later list made in 1662 recorded that 127 former Burton parliamentarians. This was the largest count in Staffordshire with the esception of Stafford.
After the Restoration, Burton was a dissenting centre, with large Presbyterian and Baptist conventicles meeting there with five excluded ministers. This raised some doubt with Anglicans over the loyalty of the town’s population. Nonconformity remained strong in the town until the early 18th century. Within ten years of the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689, six houses were registered for dissenters and there were Presbyterian, Baptist and Quaker meetings in Burton.
A plaque to commemorate the event, erected by Burton Civic Society in conjunction with Sir Thomas Tyldesley’s regiment of the English Civil War Society, can be found on the current Trent Bridge.
NEAR THIS SPOT ON 2nd JULY 1643, DURING THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR, COLONEL THOMAS TYLDESLEY LED A DESPERATE CAVALRY CHARGE OVER THE FAMOUS 36-ARCHED TRENT BRIDGE TO STORM THE TOWN OF BURTON, THE EVENT BEING PERSONALLY WITNESSED BY QUEEN MARIA [wife of Charles I]. FOR THIS EXPLOIT OF SIGNAL VALOUR, THOMAS TYLDESLEY WAS SUBSEQUENTLY KNIGHTED BY KING CHARLES I.
THIS PLAQUE WAS ERECTED ON 2nd JULY 1993 BY SIR THOMAS TYLDESLEY’S REGIMENT OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR SOCIETY AND BURTON UPON TRENT CIVIC SOCIETY.
The town hall was deemed unsuitable as offices for the town commissioners established in 1779. Nonetheless, after a number of meetings at the close by Angel Inn owned by one of their own, Sydney Evershed, it struggled on until it was in such a state that the Angel Inn became the unofficial Town Hall until 1853 !
I am still trying to find an image of it.
The commissioners appointed under the 1853 Act at first met in the county court house at the corner of Station Street and Guild Street, moving in 1858 to offices next to the clerk’s house in High Street. A proposal in 1866 to build a town hall with public meeting rooms on the site of the former gas works at the corner of Station Street and Union Street was rejected, evidently on financial grounds, and later the same year the commissioners moved into a new building at the corner of Horninglow Street and Guild Street.
The building was taken over by the municipal borough established in 1878 but was in poor state. The hall was demolished in 1883, the same year that the Market Hall was built and opened close by. In 1884, Thornewill and Warham Engineering were commissioned to construct a bridge from the memorial gardens to Andresey island. The carefully removed Paget arms tablet which can be seen at the top of the Town Hall was incorporated into the wall and can still be seen today hidden away, usually obscured by nettles, on the ‘library side’ of the Andresey bridge and is now beginning to fall apart. It really does deserve better!
The Anglesey portrait was damaged in its removal to the market hall and was lost. If you look closely in the market place, four brass corner plates are set into the block paving to mark out the footprint of the old Town Hall.
The Burton Municipal Borough Council was formed in 1878 and initially used the old Town Hall which stood in the Market Place. This building was however, unserviceable and was demolished in 1883, leaving Council meetings to be conducted in the back room of the nearby Angel public house!
In 1891, Lord Burton offered the Saint Paul’s Institute and the Liberal Club buildings to the Borough as a much needed Town Hall. It is shown below with various stages of development around it.
Originally, it was the simply the Saint Paul’s Institute and Liberal Club buildings combined.
A picture used as the subject of a postcard shows the Town Hall around the time of the Civic Offices addition.
The council Civic Offices were added to the ‘Borough Road end’ and opened in 1939, a few months before the outbreak of WWII.
And the large square in front of the building was established, adding greatly to its sense of importance.
Some may even remember the corner shop. I certainly don’t!
King Edward’s Square, now with Lord Burton’s statue in place.
By the 1950s, it was hard to imagine it ever being anything other than a Town Hall.
The Town Hall is still looking proud well over one hundred years later.
Although, having prepared this webpage, it now appears much more like a collection of separate buildings joined together than had ever occurred to me before.
With Lord Burton’s commemorative statue still looking on though now slightly obscured by trees.
The conveyance was completed in 1892, and the Liberal Club rooms were converted into municipal offices, the council chamber occupying a room on the first floor at the top of the staircase. The large hall and other rooms of St. Paul’s Institute continued to be used for public meetings and entertainments. In 1894 Lord Burton paid for an eastwards extension over a bowling green, providing additional offices and on the first floor a new council chamber.
Designed in a Decorated style by the original architect Reginald Churchill, the 1894 addition is of red brick with stone dressings and has much naturalistic stone carving on both the interior and exterior. The oak-panelled council chamber has a ceiling of Jacobean-style plasterwork and stained glass by Burlison and Grylls of London depicting the arms of all Burton’s mayors.
Since 1974 the building has housed East Staffordshire District (later Borough) Council. The present mayor’s parlour on the first floor occupies the east end of the room used as the council chamber between 1892 and 1894; the rest of the room is the office of the chief executive of the present Borough Council.
As the Town Hall became too small for an ever growing town, the adjacent four-story Municipal Buildings were built. The building is brick faced with stone in Art Deco style and was designed by the Borough Surveyor, George Moncur, and was opened in 1939.
Just like all important buildings in the Town, it was proudly adorned with the civic arms.
Passing through the doors into the depths of Burton Town Hall really is like taking a step back in time to the elegance of the Victorian era.
Up the stairs past the pictures of the most recently serving mayors with the current major at the top until his time comes to join the others; some re-shuffling will be necessary in 2010 when the current mayor takes the last available slot!
Approaching the top of the stairs, the imposing picture of Michael Thomas Bass, the father of Lord Burton who famously donated the building to be used as a much needed new Town Hall.
The landing shows the mayor’s private parlour half way along on the right with the beckoning doors of the main Council Chamber at the end.
The Mayor’s Parlour continues in victorian style with the walls covered with every mayor starting from W.H.Worthington, the first mayor serving in 1878-79, to the most recent.
The Council Chamber itself is no disappointment and has the marvellous feel of a small version of the house of Commons. Several imposing pictures oversee the proceedings, the most conspicuous one guarding the door being W.H.Worthington.
The front bench must make local councillors sometimes feel that they are up in front of the local magistate.Â
The impressive chamber ceiling.
Finally, although a later addition, the foyer memorial board.