Tamworth
Have a Tamworth to sell? List it.Recovering on the Conservation Priority List, 2026 edition
About Tamworth pigs
The Tamworth is long, lean and athletic, and it may be the closest thing left to the native pig stock of northern Europe.
Part of its ancestry is documented: the now-extinct Irish Grazer. In 1812 Sir Robert Peel, later twice Prime Minister, imported Irish Grazers to his farm at Tamworth in Staffordshire, which is where the name comes from, and crossed them with local pigs out of Stafford, Warwick, Leicester and Northampton. Before 1815 grizzled dark red pigs were mostly a Midlands animal, foraging the oak and beech woods there through autumn and winter.
That is the shape the breed kept. It is thought to resemble the original European forest swine more closely than any other surviving pig.
It was standardized in the early-to-mid 1800s through careful selection and management, and it appears unlikely that other breeds contributed much.
The one thing to be sure of before you buy: Tamworths do not do well in confinement. This is a pig that needs ground to work.
Sourced from The Livestock Conservancy and the breed’s registry, reviewed by HoofnHorn.
No Tamworth pigs at auction right now.
Heritage breeds come up in ones and twos, so this is normal. We will email you the moment a Tamworth is listed.