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.
XXXII
Leaving Retford by Bridgegate, the road rises at once to the long five-miles’ stretch of Barnby Moor, home of howling winds and whirling snow-wreaths in winter, and equally unprotected from the fierce glare of the midsummer sun. At the further end of this trying place, just past a huddled group of cottages at the bend of the road, stands the famous old “Blue Bell” inn. But no one was ever heard to talk of this old coaching hostelry as the “Blue Bell.” The “Bell,” Barnby Moor, was the title by which it was always known.
For the beginning of the well-earned fame of the “Bell” we must go back a long way. Not, indeed, to ancient times, for there was never a mediæval hostel here, but to very old coaching days. Already, in 1776, when the Rev. Thomas Twining was ambling about the country on “Poppet,” making picturesque notes, it was a “gentlemanlike, comfortable house,” and Sterne knew it well. “I am worn out,” says he in one of his letters, “but press on to Barnby Moor to-night.” Even the “worn-out” would make an effort, you see, to reach this hospitable roof-tree.
But a greater fame was earned by the “Bell” in its later days, when it was kept by George Clark, at once innkeeper, sportsman, and breeder of racehorses. He was famed for his anecdotal and conversational powers, and when free from gout was reputed “a tough customer over the mahogany,” in which testimony we may read, in the manner of that time, a crowning virtue. Something—nay, a great deal—more than the “red-nosed innkeepers” of whom Sir Walter Scott speaks, he was also a landed proprietor, and supplied his extensive establishment from his own farm. Peculiarly the man for this road, and especially for this portion of the road, his personality made the “Bell” inn—the word “hotel” was in those days an abomination and an offence—the especial resort of the sporting fraternity, and racing men generally contrived to make his house their halting-place.
Clark reigned at the “Bell” for forty years, from 1800, dying of gout in 1842, shortly after he had sold the house to a Mr. Inett. His was that famous mare, Lollypop, who gave birth to the yet more famous Sweetmeat. But Clark did not live to learn the quality of that foal, and Sweetmeat was sold at the dispersal of his stable for ten guineas. Three years later, when he had won the Somersetshire Stakes at Bath, Lord George Bentinck in vain offered four thousand guineas for him, and later in that year, 1845, he won the Doncaster Cup.
Clark was chiefly instrumental in bringing to justice two incendiaries, disciples of “Captain Swing,” who had fired a hayrick not far from the “Bell.” At that period—the early “thirties”—when the Reform agitation was embittering the relations between the squires and the peasantry, rick-burnings were prevalent all over the country. They went by the name of the “Swing Riots,” from the circumstance of the threatening letters and notices received being signed in the name of that entirely pseudonymous or mythical person. One night Clark was roused from his bed with the information that the rioters were at work close at hand. Hastily rising and dressing by the glare of his neighbour’s burning ricks, he told off fifty from his numerous staff of postboys and stable helpers to mount and to thoroughly explore the country within a circuit of ten miles, offering a reward of £5 to the one who would discover the miscreants, together with five shillings a head to all who took part in the chase. It was a successful foray; for, before morning dawned, two shivering “rioters” were brought to him. They had been found hiding in a ditch. Matches and other incriminating things were found on them, and, being committed to York Castle, they eventually were awarded fourteen years’ transportation.
The old “Bell” is still standing. A hundred and twenty horses for the road were kept here in those old times, but to-day, instead of horses, we have motor-cars.
Soon after railways had driven the coaches off the road, the “Bell” ceased to be an inn. Its circumstances were peculiar. Standing as it did, and still does, away from any town or village, its only trade was with coaching or posting travellers, and when they disappeared altogether there was nothing for it but to close down. And so for sixty years and more the “Bell” became a private residence, and it would have remained so had not a road-enthusiast taken it and re-opened the old house in 1906 as a hotel for touring motorists. The enthusiast took other hotels on this road. Took so many indeed that his resources as a private person were overstrained, and he went bankrupt. But the “Bell,” in this, its second time, flourishes exceedingly.