Uttoxeter is a characteristic specimen of an old English market town, which neither the railway nor what Carlyle contemptuously calls “the age of gin and steam-hammers” has left unspoiled. It has many interesting literary and historical associations. Here Mary Howitt was born; and Dr. Johnson’s father, bookseller at Lichfield, kept a stall in the market-place. On one occasion he asked his son to attend the market in his place, but the future lexicographer’s stubborn pride led to insubordination. Fifty years afterwards, haunted by this disobedience of the paternal wish, Dr. Johnson made a pilgrimage to Uttoxeter market-place, and in inclement weather stood bare-headed for a considerable time on the spot where his father’s stall used to stand, exposed to a pelting rain and the flippant sneers of the bystanders. “In contrition,” he confesses, “I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory.” The incident says much for Johnson’s character, and the scene may be commended to a painter in search of an historical theme.
THE STRAITS, DOVEDALE.
At Uttoxeter the Dove is thirty-eight miles from its mountain home. It now winds past Sudbury, where it is crossed by a strikingly handsome bridge giving access to Lord Vernon’s domain, with its deer park of 600 acres and model dairy farm. The Hall is a red-brick mansion in the Elizabethan style, and was erected in the early part of the seventeenth century. This delightful retreat was the residence of the Dowager Queen Adelaide from 1840 to 1843. The church, which is within the park, is a large and venerable structure, grey with age, and green with glossy ivy.
Presently comes Tutbury, where the Dove is fifty miles from Axe Edge. It flows under the commanding castle hill, where the ruins of a building that existed before the Norman Conquest look down grim and gloomy upon the glad Dove, glancing up at its dismantled walls with their chequered history from the green plain to which she lends such grace. The three towers associated with John of Gaunt make a diversified sky-line. Tutbury Castle has all the credentials necessary to make the reputation of a respectable ruin. For fifteen years it was the prison-house of Mary Queen of Scots, and it suffered from the cannon of Cromwell. The west doorway of the Priory Church, with its “chevron” tracery, is a glorious specimen of Norman architecture. The village was notorious for its bull-baiting, and everybody has heard of “the fasting woman of Tutbury,” one Ann Moore, who professed to live without food. She added an assumption of piety to her imposture, and by this means collected £240. She was subsequently sent to prison for fraud. An interesting feature in connection with the history of the place should receive notice. In 1831 an extraordinary find of coins was made in the bed of the river, over 100,000 in number. People flocked from all parts to dig up the auriferous and argentiferous river-bed, until at last the Crown despatched a troop of soldiers to protect the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster. Still stands the notice-board on the bridge threatening prosecution to all trespassers. It is supposed that the coins formed part of the treasury of the Earl of Lancaster when he had taken up arms against Edward II., and that in the panic of retreat across the Dove the money chests were lost in the swollen river, at that time scarcely fordable.
The Dove valley downward from Tutbury past Marston, Rolleston, and Egginton, is full of quiet and stately beauty. At Newton Solney the stream, as crystal as it was in the limestone dales, is greeted by the Trent, its clear waters soon losing their shining transparency in the darker tinged tide of the larger river.
Edward Bradbury.
JOHN OF GAUNT’S GATEWAY, TUTBURY CASTLE.