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:—