Tipton
04 August 2005
There is one building of note here, the old Tipton library; a listed Carnegie building, now boarded up and covered with unimaginative graffiti.
A big chunk of lottery and City Challenge money was pumped into the place though if you can make out what the locals are saying they’ll describe the town as “a fucking shithole” and “depressing in the extreme”.
The highest compliment paid to Tipton was by a German Zepellin commander on a misty night in 1916 - he mistook it for Birkenhead and lobbed a few bombs on it before heading for “Liverpool” (Wednesbury). The only sense of community is provided by those who remember that night - the bright young things of Tipton are lured off to the Shangri-Las of Dudley and Wolverhampton.
Henry Raddick
"I do nothing and then I do something. But it's taken years of investigating idleness in all its forms to be able to achieve this. My discipline is borne out of concerted study of idleness."