TAMWORTH

city, east-central New South Wales, Australia, on the Peel River, a tributary of the Namoi River. It was founded in 1848 in a valley (visited in 1818 by the explorer John Oxley) by a British land-development corporation and was named after Tamworth in Staffordshire, England, which was the parliamentary constituency of the British prime minister Sir Robert Peel. Tamworth was made a town in 1850 and a municipality in 1876. During the 1860s, it was an important coaching station. In 1946 it was proclaimed a city. Now at the junction of the Oxley and New England highways and with air and rail links to Sydney (135 miles southeast), Tamworth serves parts of the New England and Western Slopes districts that produce livestock, poultry, fruits, vegetables, wheat, tobacco, honey, and fodder crops. Its industries include egg and dairy processing, food freezing, and lumber and flour milling; other factories produce furniture, cable, aluminum products, truck and bus bodies, and starch. The city has several notable secondary schools and an art gallery. Pop. (1981) 29,657. borough (district), administrative county of Staffordshire, England, at the confluence of the Tame and Anker rivers, on the northeastern periphery of the metropolitan area centred on Birmingham. The historic centre of Tamworth and the rest of the borough north of the Anker and west of the Tame lies in the historic county of Staffordshire. The part of the borough south of the Anker and east of the Tame belongs to the historic county of Warwickshire. Offa, 8th-century king of Anglo-Saxon Mercia, built a palace on the site. The present castle, of Norman origin, was largely restored in the Jacobean period (160349). The town of Tamworth, a borough since Anglo-Saxon times, grew around its medieval market and was incorporated in 1560. The present Tamworth is the centre of an agricultural and former coal-mining area, and its industries include agricultural engineering, textiles, asbestos, and aluminum ware. Area 12 square miles (31 square km). Pop. (1998 est.) 73,900.