XXX
By Beast Market Hill, past the castle and over the bridge, one leaves Newark for the north. Level crossings of the railways now and again bedevil the way, which is flat so far as the eye can reach—and much farther, and the meadows on either side are intersected by runlets and marshes, the road carried over them by a succession of red-brick bridges. At a distance of one and a half miles, the true Trent is crossed by a wooden bridge, and South Muskham reached, where the level-crossing gates take the place of the old turnpike.
The act of looking backwards at this point is a more pleasing physical exercise than the mental retrospect is ever likely to be, anywhere. Sir Walter Scott perceived the beauty of the view, for he introduces it in Jeanie Deans’ journey south, and says, in a fine passage: “The hundred-armed Trent and the blackened ruins of Newark castle, demolished in the great Civil War, lay before her.”
“Hundred-armed” is a good and eloquent figure, although on a prosaic calculation likely to be found an exaggeration. Milton, indeed, writing a hundred and ninety years or so before, gives the Trent but thirty arms, on which, it must be allowed, Sir Walter’s computation is a great advance. But here is Milton’s version:—
“Trent, which like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads.”
Even Drayton, in his Polyolbion, does not more nearly approach to Sir Walter’s computation, in the couplet:—
“The bounteous Trent, that in herself enseams,
Both thirty sorts of fish and thirty sundry streams.”
Shakespeare rather shirks the calculation, and contents himself with describing it as the “smug and silver Trent.” As for mere travellers, who did not happen to be poets or to be engaged in the exploitation of scenery, they regarded this stream merely with apprehension, and they did right so to look upon it, for Trent often overflowed its thirty or hundred arms, as the case might be, and converted the flats for miles around into the semblage of a vast lake. Then, indeed—if at no other time—Newark was “upon” Trent, if not actually “in” it, and all the many other towns and villages, which bear a similarly composite title, were in like case. Doubtless it was on one of these occasions in 1739, before the river was bridged here, that the Newcastle wagon was lost at the ford, when the driver and the horses all perished. Nearly thirty years later, on the 6th of June 1767, the poet Gray, writing from London, before starting on a journey in these parts, says:—“Pray that the Trent may not intercept us at Newark, for we have had infinite rain here.” Nor are floods infrequent, even now, and many a boating-party has voyaged down the Great North Road between Newark and Carlton-upon-Trent.
North and South Muskham lie off the road to the right, and are not remarkable, except perhaps for the fact that a centenarian, in the person of Thomas Seals of Grassthorpe, who died in 1802, age 106, lies in North Muskham churchyard. Cromwell, on the other hand, which now comes in sight, although now a commonplace roadside village of uninteresting, modern, red-brick cottages, with an old, but not remarkable, church, has a place in history. According to Carlyle, “the small parish of Cromwell, or Crumwell (the well of Crum, whatever that may be), not far from the left bank of the Trent, simple worshippers still doing in it some kind of divine service every Sunday,” was the original home of the Cromwell family, from which the great Protector sprang. “From this,” he adds, “without any ghost to teach us, we can understand that the Cromwell kindred all got their name.” But the hero-worshipper will look in vain for anything at Cromwell to connect the place with that family. Not even a tablet in the church; nothing, in fact, save the name itself survives.
Here is a blacksmith’s forge, with the design of a huge horseshoe encompasing the door, and this inscription:—
“F. NAYLOR
BlacksmithGentlemen, as you pass by,
Upon this shoe pray cast an eye.
I’ll make it wider,
I’ll ease the horse and please the rider.
If lame from shoeing, as they often are
You may have them eased with the greatest care.”
Hence to Carlton-upon-Trent, Sutton-upon-Trent, Scarthing Moor, and Tuxford is an easy transition of nearly eight miles, with little scenery or history on the way. An old posting-house, now retired into private life, the level-crossing of Crow Park, and an old roadside inn, the “Nag’s Head,” beside it are all the objects of interest at Carlton; while Sutton is scarce more than a name, so far as the traveller along the road is concerned.
Weston, a village at a bend and dip of the road, stands by what was once Scarthing Moor, whose famous inn, the “Black Lion,” is now, like the old-time festivities of Sutton-on-Trent, only a memory. The farmers and cottagers of Sutton-on-Trent long preserved the spring-time custom of welcoming the coaches, and freely feasting guards, coachmen, and passengers. It was an annual week’s merrymaking, and young and old united to keep it up. Coaches were compelled to stop in the village street, and every one was invited to partake of the good things spread out upon a tray covered with a beautiful damask napkin on which were attractively displayed plum-cakes, tartlets, gingerbread, exquisite home-made bread and biscuits, ale, currant and gooseberry wines, cherry-brandy, and sometimes spirits. These in old-fashioned glass jugs, embossed with figures, had a most pleasing effect. As to the contents, they were superlative. Such ale! such currant-wine! such cherry-brandy! Half a dozen damsels, all enchanting young people, neatly clad, rather shy, but courteously importunate plied the passengers.
“Eat and drink you must,” says one who partook of these al fresco hospitalities. “I tasted all. How could I resist the winning manners of the rustics, with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes? My poor stomach, not used to such luxuries and extraordinaries at eleven o’clock in the morning, was, however, in fine agitation the remainder of the ride, fifty miles. Neither time nor entreaties can prevent their solicitations; they are issued to reward the men for trifling kindnesses occasionally granted.”
“Scarthing Moor” is a name of somewhat terrifying sound; but, as with all the “moors” met with on the Great North Road, enclosure and cultivation have entirely changed its character, and the “moor” is just a stretch of fields undistinguishable from the surrounding country. It leads presently to the little town of Tuxford-in-the-Clay, approached up a steep rise passing under the bridge of the Lincolnshire and East Coast Railway, and in view of Tuxford’s Great Northern Station, away on the right, perched on a windy and uncomfortable-looking ridge. A red rash of recent brick cottages has broken out at the foot of the rise, but Tuxford itself, on the crest of the hill, seems unchanged since coaching days, except that the traffic which then enlivened it has gone. It is a gaunt, lifeless place, in spite of its three railway stations, and stands where the roads cross on the height, and the church, the “Newcastle Arms,” another inn which arrogates the title of “The Hotel,” and the private houses and shops of the decayed town face a wide open street, and all shiver in company. But Tuxford has seen gorgeous sights in its time. Witness the gay and lengthy cavalcade that “lay” here in the July of 1503, when the Princess Margaret was on her way to her marriage with the king of Scotland. The princess stayed at the “Crown,” demolished in 1587 by one of the storms which hill-top Tuxford knows so well, and leaving us the poorer by one ancient hostelry. Not that it would have survived to this day had there been no storm, for the town itself was destroyed by fire at a much later date, in 1702.
The “Newcastle Arms” is one of those old houses built for the reception of many and wealthy travellers in the Augustan age of the road, and is by consequence many sizes too large for present needs, so that a portion of the house is set apart for offices quite unconnected with hotel business. Even the roomy old church away on the other side of the broad road seems on too large a scale for Tuxford, as it is, and the stone effigies of the Longvilliers and the mouldy hatchments of later families hanging on the walls of its bare chapels tell a tale of vanished greatness. There is a curious and clumsy carving in this church, representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. The Saint is shown on his gridiron (which resembles nothing so much as a ladder) and wears a pleased expression, as though he rather liked the process of being grilled, while one tormentor is turning him and another blowing up the fire with a pair of bellows.
After the church, the old red-brick grammar-school, founded by “Carolo Read” in 1669, is the most interesting building in Tuxford. “What God hath built, let no man destroy,” says the inscription over the entrance, placed there, no doubt, by the donor with a vivid recollection of the destruction wrought in the Civil War of some twenty years before.
The road leaves Tuxford steeply downhill and facing another hill. Descending this, the villages of East and West Markham are just visible, right and left; West Markham with a hideous church like a Greek temple, its green copper dome conspicuous for a long distance. At the foot of Cleveland Hill, as it is called, is, or was, Markham Moor, for it was enclosed in 1810, with the great “Markham Moor Inn,” now looking very forlorn and lonely, standing at the fall of the roads, where the turnpike gate used to be, and where the Worksop road goes off to the left, and a battered pillar of grey stone with a now illegible inscription stands. This may or may not be the “Rebel Stone,” spoken of in old county histories as standing by the wayside, bearing the inscription, “Here lieth the Body of a Rebel, 1746.”
Beyond this, again, is Gamston, a still decaying village, its red-brick houses ruined or empty, the wayside forge closed and the handsome old church on a hillock but sparsely attended; the whole a picture of the failure and neglect which descended upon the roadside villages fifty years ago. Many have found other vocations, but Gamston is not of them.
For some one hundred and fifty years the Great North Road has gone through Tuxford to East Retford and Barnby Moor; but this is not the original road. That has to be sought, half-deserted, away to the left. There is much romance on that old way, which is one of several derelict branching roads just here. The time seems to be approaching when this original road will be restored, to effect a relief to the heavy traffic through Retford.
We may branch off for the exploration of the old road either at Markham Moor or at Gamston. Either turning will bring us in two and a half miles to Jockey House, now a farmhouse, but once an inn at what were cross-roads. Two of these roads are grass tracks, but the old Great North Road on to Rushy Inn and Barnby Moor is quite good, although very little used.
A substantial stone pillar stands at the corner of the cross-roads opposite the Jockey House, inscribed:—
From
London 142
Miles
and a half
Coach Road
Work/op Mannor
Hou/e
7 Miles 3 qrs
176 —
The Keys
in the Jockey
House.
The “keys in the Jockey House” means that here was a turnpike-gate with no turnpike keeper. The taking of toll seems to have been conducted from the inn.
In the churchyard of Elkisley, a mile or so distant, there is a tombstone which refers to a tragedy in the Jockey House two hundred years ago. It reads:—
“Here lieth the body of
JOHN BARAGH,
gentleman, who was murdered by
Midford Hendry, officer of the Guards,
on the 24th day of June, 1721.
Age 29 years.”
Hendry, it seems, was in command of a company of Guards travelling south on the Great North Road. They had halted for refreshment at Jockey House, and Hendry got into a violent political discussion in the inn with Baragh, who was sitting there, a complete stranger to him. In the course of their high words, Hendry drew his sword and stabbed Baragh to the heart.
