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.
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.
