XXXI
Retford, on the main road, is over three miles distant from Gamston, past the more cheerful-looking little hamlet of Eaton, and the outlying settlement by the “White House Inn,” at the beginning of the long approach to the town.
Retford is a town of varied industries, situated on either bank of the river Idle, and by it divided into East and West Retford. Engineering works, brick and tile making, and agricultural pursuits combine to render it prosperous, if not progressive, for when Retford built its elaborate Town Hall in 1867 it probably exhausted itself with the effort. In this Square, on a plinth, stands the “Bread Stone,” or “Broad Stone,” a seventeenth century Plague Stone with a hollow at that time filled with vinegar and water for the immersion of coins passing in the market against infection. The town centres in its Market Square, in which the old Town Hall stood. When that building was pulled down a great amount of additional room was obtained at the cost of a certain picturesqueness, to which quality the town can now scarcely lay claim. The “White Hart,” standing at this corner of the Market Square, is the only relic of old coaching days. Its modernised frontage does not give the house credit for the respectable age which it really owns, and it is only when we explore the stableyard, a picturesque and narrow passage, extending from the Market Square to Bridgegate, that we see the old-time importance of the “White Hart.” It is perhaps unique in one respect. Nowadays, the old innkeepers are, of course, all dead. In some instances their families carried on the business for a while, but soon afterwards all these old coaching-houses passed into other hands. Even the Percival family, innkeepers and coach-masters for some generations at Wansford and at Greetham, no longer have the “Haycock” or the “Greetham Inn,” but the “White Hart” is still in the Dennett family, and has been since 1818, when William Dennett took it over. He reigned here until 1848, and was succeeded by his son, Joseph Dennett, who, dying in 1890, was in his turn followed by Arthur Dennett, the present landlord. An old coaching-house—the coaching-house of Retford—it occupied a particularly favourable position on the main and cross-country coach-routes: those of Worksop and Chesterfield on the one hand, and Gainsborough, Market Rasen, and Boston on the other. Besides being in receipt of the local coaching business between Stamford and Doncaster, Joseph Dennett horsed a stage of the Doncaster and Stamford Amity Coach and the Stamford and Retford Auxiliary Mail, among others.
Although overshadowed by the neighbouring “Bell” on Barnby Moor, kept by the mighty George Clark, this house did a good posting business. For one thing, the story of the “White Hart” as a posting-house does not go back so far as that of the “Bell,” for when Clark came to Barnby Moor he found a fine business already developed, but the rise of the “White Hart” into prominence dates only from the coming of the Dennetts. Twelve post-horses and three boys formed its ordinary posting establishment, and among them the name of John Blagg is prominent. He left the “Bell” at an early period and entered the service of the “White Hart” in 1834, remaining for forty-five years, and dying, at the age of seventy-five, in October 1880. The old posting-books of the house still show one of his feats of endurance, the riding post from Retford to York and back in one day, a distance of a hundred and ten miles. When posting became a thing of the past, John Blagg was still in request, and his well-remembered figure, clad in the traditional postboy costume of white breeches, blue jacket, and white beaver hat, was seen almost to the last at weddings and other celebrations when riding postillion was considered indispensable. Here he is, portrayed from the life, a characteristic figure of a vanished era.
There are still some relics of that time at the “White Hart”: the old locker belonging to the Boston coach, in which the guard used to secure the valuables intrusted to him; and in the sunny old booking-office looking out upon the Market Square there are even now some old posting-saddles and postboys’ whips.