There are, it seems, many schools of thought as to why Frome became ‘cool’ and ‘fashionable’, along with all the accolades heaped upon it in recent years.
Some trace it back to the arrival of Babington House, others to the revival of independent shopping in Catherine Hill . . . the list can be dauntingly endless.
What seems to be a regular foundation stone in many of these theories, however, is the phrase ‘even as recent as ten years ago, Frome was still a bit of a dump’. So, what exactly happened a decade ago then that might have sparked a Frome renaissance, no less worthy of its Italian predecessor.
Well, for a start, 2009 saw the inaugural Cobble Wobble, the legendary event that dared hundreds of cyclists to wobble their way up the cobbles of Catherine Hill.
Although not nationally famous itself, it was started to commemorate the sixth stage of that year’s Tour of Britain, which began from Frome in the September.
But it was another wheeled sporting event, the following month, which went a stratosphere distance more in helping to put the town on the world stage.
This was Frome-born Jenson Button’s winning of the Formula One World Championship at the Brazilian Grand Prix, with a race to spare, in that October.
Although destined to be his only F1 championship and to lose out to Ryan Giggs in BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, the vroom was now firmly in froome (sic).
This month of October 2009, however, is also marked out in Frome history as the one in which it became twinned with a BBC prime time television show.
The town had already engaged in conventional official twinning with the French town of Château-Gontier (1975) and Baden Wuttemberg in Germany (1983).
But when BBC’s One Show announced it wanted to twin itself with the quirkiest town in the country, this was too good an opportunity to miss. Accordingly, local businesswoman Mandy Stone, who at the time ran LoveArts in Catherine Hill, composed a poem celebrating the town’s quirkiness and won.
The resultant ‘twinning’ ceremony saw the programme’s presenters – Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley – fly into Frome by helicopter to take part.
After meeting local people such as Mike Bishop, the town crier, and Reg Ling, keeper of the Valentine’s Lamp, the pair headed for the town council offices.
The day’s events in Frome were aired on the prime time show the following day and saw businesswoman turn poet, Mandy Stone, make a guest appearance.
So, even if 2009 is not ‘Year Zero’, in terms of Frome’s popularity, it must surely be considered as going some way in lighting that blue touch paper of ‘cool’.
Mick Davis &
David Lassman
