Big Big Train are the most successful rock band that you have never heard of.

In October 2019 they sold out Birmingham Town Hall; in March 2022 they will perform at the Symphony Hall. Their new album 'Common Ground' is steadily climbing the charts. If it doesn't reach no. 1, then I am Bishop Vesey.

Big Big Train has a strong connection with Sutton Coldfield. Though he now lives in Hampshire, its founder Gregory Spawton is a Suttonian. He grew up in Maney in Sutton Coldfield and was educated at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School. The centrepiece of the new album is a song tied in with the history of Sutton. It is about the Atlantic cable of 1866. This remarkable feat of Victorian engineering enabled the Old World to be connected to the New by means of telegraph messages transmitted along the cable. Prior to this the only way that messages could be sent was by ship. It took several attempts. before the cable was successfully laid by the Great Eastern.

If you visit the Ramada Hotel in Penns Lane, you can see in the entrance a plaque to Baron Dickinson Webster. The hotel was once a country house occupied by the Webster family. You can also see a large lake which once provided water power for a mill. B.D. Webster was a partner in Webster & Horsfall, the business that manufactured the armouring for the cable. Webster & Horsfall operated from two sites - at Penns and Hay Mills. The mill at Penns provided employment for many men who lived in Walmley - as wire-drawers, furnace hands and labourers.

By the time the cable was manufactured operations had been moved to Hay Mills and B.D. Webster was dead. But he had laid the ground for this extraordinary achievement.

In January 2019, I brought out a book about Webster & Horsfall & the Atlantic Cable, which was launched in a crowded room in Sutton Library. Gregory was not present, but he bought the book. In the months which followed he assembled 15 minutes of music and then added lyrics which deftly tell the story of the laying of the cable.

It is an epic song for an epic tale.

It seems very fitting that this remarkable event should be celebrated in song by a Suttonian.

'Common Ground' by Big Big Train is out now.

'Webster & Horsfall & the Atlantic Cable' by Stephen Roberts can be ordered from Amazon, priced at £4.50,

Associate Professor
Stephen Roberts