JUNCTION OF THE TRENT AND THE DOVE.
THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
CHAPTER III.
THE TRENT, FROM NEWTON SOLNEY TO THE DERWENT.
Newton Solney—Repton: The School and the Church—Swarkestone: Its Bridge and its Church—Chellaston—Donington Park and Castle Donington—Cavendish Bridge.
Truly a pretty spot is the little village of Newton Solney, rising up the slope from a low scarp which overlooks the Trent, with its scattered houses, its small church spire, and the fine old trees around the hall. This indeed is a modern structure, and certainly not picturesque, but there has been a mansion on this site for many a year, for the De Sulneys had the estate full six centuries ago, and there is a fine monument to one of them in the interesting church. Trent sweeps on through the broad and level meadows, now become a strong full stream, which near Willington Station—where it is bridged—is about eighty yards wide. Here, in the valley indeed, but nearly a mile away from the actual margin of the river, is a little town of great antiquity and unusual interest. Repton, distinguished from afar by the slender and lofty spire of its church, is the Hreopandum of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Some suppose it to be the Roman Repandunum; certainly it was a place of importance more than twelve centuries since, for it was selected by Diuma, the first Bishop of Mercia, as the centre of his huge diocese, and here, about the year 658, he died and was buried. Soon after this a nunnery was founded, and before St. Chad removed the “bishop’s-stool” to Lichfield, St. Guthlac had started from Repton to float down the Trent, and to wander through the fenland of East Anglia till he settled down on the swampy island of Crowland. So many of the Princes of Mercia were buried here that the abbey is described by a Norman chronicler as “that most holy mausoleum of all the Kings of Mercia.” Hither, for instance, in the year 775, the body of Ethelbald was brought for burial from the fatal field of Secandun. No trace of his tomb, or indeed of that of any other Mercian King, now remains. Since those days changes have been so many that monuments have had little chance of escaping; but probably these and the monastery were alike destroyed when a horde of Danish plunderers swept through the Midlands of England, and Bathred of Mercia, in the year 874, had to fly before them. These unwelcome intruders spent the winter at Repington. At their hands Mercian monuments and monastic buildings would fare ill. Prior to this calamity the body of St. Wystan, a devout Prince, heir to the throne of Mercia, was laid here by the side of his mother Alfleda. On Whitsun-eve, 849, he was assassinated by a cousin, and before long miracles in plenty were wrought at his tomb. His relics, on the approach of the Danes, were transferred for safety to Evesham, and when the church was rebuilt, in the tenth century, the new structure was dedicated to his memory. Repton, at the time of Domesday Book, was a part of the Royal demesne; then we find it included in the estates of the Earls of Chester. The nunnery in some way or other had come to an end, for a widowed countess of this line founded on the site a priory of Black Canons in the year 1172, of which considerable remnants may still be seen.
REPTON.