Ed Sheeran. Sean Smith
or, in Ed’s case, build with Lego. He loved it, and those happy hours spent as a child would benefit him later when he needed to apply himself patiently to constructing a song. Even as an adult, Lego was comforting.
His mother and father finally weakened and bought a TV licence when Ed was nine. He wondered what all the fuss was about until he discovered The Simpsons – but it was shown at 6 p.m. and clashed with choir practice on a Friday evening. Ed’s heart wasn’t in that musical activity. One regular churchgoer still smiles when she remembers the two Sheeran boys scampering out of the Sunday service at St Michael’s almost before the organist had played the last notes of the final hymn. Their mother’s continued support for the choir, on the other hand, was much appreciated locally: ‘You can tell when she’s singing,’ observes one member of the congregation.
Ed nagged his parents to let him off singing in the church choir. Eventually, they agreed on the understanding that he joined his school choir instead. He was now a pupil at Brandeston Hall, which was in a beautiful location that could rival that of his first school in Yorkshire. The imposing stately hall is at the heart of the village of Brandeston, about four miles south of Framlingham. From its position next to the River Deben, the views across the water meadows would inspire any painter.
The hall was destroyed by fire in 1847 but was rebuilt as an almost exact replica of the Tudor original. It became the prep school for Framlingham College in 1949, and still has the stopped-in-time quality that J. K. Rowling might have imagined for her Harry Potter stories. At Brandeston Hall, Ed came out of his shell. He made a best friend called James Mee and the two boys would take it in turns to go to each other’s houses after school.
James did not have the same television restrictions and it was at his house that Ed was introduced to The Simpsons. He also tasted meat for the first time. Imogen had been keen to start her sons on a healthy diet so the household was vegetarian for a few years. Ed was somewhat taken aback when he sat down for tea in James’s kitchen and was presented with a hearty plate of bangers and mash. He told his friend’s mum, ‘These are the best sausages I’ve ever eaten’, which was true, as he had never tried them before.
From then on, sausages would become a particular favourite. Imogen’s full English fry-ups were a sought-after breakfast when they had friends or visiting musicians to stay. The Sheerans soon became popular hosts in Framlingham, or ‘Fram’, as it’s known locally. Their sociability and ease in company contributed to their younger son’s cautiously growing confidence.
Everything about the market town of Framlingham was cosy – a picture postcard of old England, steeped in history. It was compact, easy to get around and surrounded by delightful countryside. An added bonus was that it was only fourteen miles to the coast where Imogen’s parents lived in Aldeburgh. The drive to Ipswich station to catch the train to London, a journey Ed would become very familiar with over the years, took forty minutes on a good day.
Just like Hebden Bridge, Framlingham has a strong sense of community, with traditional local pubs, independent shops and higgledy-piggledy streets full of the pink cottages so representative of the heart of Suffolk. On any day in the Market Square, the hub of the place, you are likely to see at least six people you know.
The cream-tea atmosphere of the present hardly matches the town’s colourful and somewhat violent past. Framlingham Castle was the seat of the earls and dukes of Norfolk until it passed to Henry VIII’s daughter Mary – ‘Bloody Mary’, as she was known. This was where she gathered her troops before she was proclaimed Queen of England and marched to London to take her throne in the summer of 1553.
The castle was a short walk from the new family home, a spacious detached house, which they bought for the relatively bargain price of £125,000. Today it would cost you £600,000. Ed had his own bedroom and a new piano was installed downstairs in one of the reception rooms at the back, which was perfect for entertaining.
In pride of place amid all the artwork the Sheerans continued to acquire, there were framed photographs of the two boys meeting the Prince of Wales. The family’s association with Prince Charles represented the pinnacle to date of John Sheeran’s career as a curator of prestigious exhibitions. He was appointed to organise and co-ordinate the prince’s fiftieth-birthday exhibition, in 1998. Entitled ‘Travels with the Prince’, it celebrated his work as a watercolourist. It included paintings by contemporary artists such as Emma Sergeant, Derek Hill and Susannah Fiennes, cousin of the Oscar-winning actor Ralph Fiennes. The artists had been specially chosen to accompany Charles on his tours abroad.
The exhibition at the Cartoon Gallery in Hampton Court Palace, in Surrey, proved a big success. With little fuss, Prince Charles has become one of the UK’s most successful artists, whose paintings have raised millions for the Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation. The deal for the travelling artists was that their trip was paid for, the prince had first choice of their paintings and, subsequently, they were free to sell their own work. It was a formula that worked exceptionally well.
Sheeran Lock produced a sumptuous book to accompany the exhibition, in which Imogen wrote the preface and John the text. It was part of a golden period for the couple as John’s star continued to rise. In 2003, he was commissioned by the then President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, to curate a special show of present-day Nigerian art in Abuja where the Commonwealth heads of government were meeting. The exhibition included a ground-breaking art-education project for young people from all regions of Nigeria. John and Imogen were inspired by that success to devise other programmes to help disadvantaged young people in the UK. Their philosophy was simple – nobody should be excluded from appreciating art and participating in it.
Ed was shielded from hardship in Framlingham and settled in well to life at a gentle Suffolk pace. The family had a more lively time on their frequent trips to Ireland to visit John’s parents in County Wexford. John is one of eight children – five boys and three girls including his twin sister, Mary Anne – which meant Ed had cousins all over the country. The Sheerans are a large close-knit clan: Ed has always been aware of the importance of family, and has often sung about it. Despite John being born in South London, the Sheerans were very much an Irish clan so Ireland and its music have had a profound influence on Ed’s life.
Ed’s grandfather, Bill Sheeran, was born in Magera, a small town in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He grew up in the East End of London after his father, James, became a local doctor in Bow. James, who was Ed’s great-grandfather, was reputedly a decent boxer and family legend has it that he once fought the great heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in an exhibition bout in 1913. After a spell of bullying at school when Bill was spotted carrying his violin case, his father had enrolled him in a boxing club and taken him to local tournaments, which had led to a lifelong love of the sport. In a similar way, Ed’s love of music was enhanced by joining his own father for evenings out at pop concerts.
During the Second World War, Bill Sheeran boxed for his school, Epsom College, then trained as a dentist at Guy’s Hospital in Southwark. He continued his love affair with the noble art and became captain of the hospital’s boxing club, where he was trained by Matt Wells, a former world welterweight champion. One of Bill’s favourite jokes was that the hospital’s motto, Dare Quam Accipere, was perfect for boxers. More familiarly translated, this means, ‘[It is better] to give than to receive.’
While studying at Guy’s, Bill took on his most infamous bout – against Charlie Kray, the elder brother of the notorious gangsters, Ronnie and Reggie. Expert opinion gave Bill no chance. Walter Bartleman, boxing correspondent of the old London evening paper the Star, and later the Evening Standard, told him before the fight, ‘He’ll eat you.’ It didn’t work out like that: Bill won the bout on a stoppage when Charlie was unable to continue.
Bill met his future wife Anne Mulligan at Guy’s where she worked as a nurse. She had been raised on a farm near Gorey, a small town in County Wexford, about sixty miles south of Dublin. Ed romanticised their story on his ÷ album. The track ‘Nancy Mulligan’, a traditional Irish jig, describes how theirs was a Romeo and Juliet story. In Ed’s tribute to his grandparents, he highlights the religious divide between a Protestant boy from Northern Ireland and a Catholic girl from the Republic. Her father, according to the song, did not