MEADOW LAND AT AXHOLME.
The old chapel mentioned by Leland, the traditional burial-place of sundry Danish invaders, is gone; but the visitor who has traversed the rather long and, near the waterside, unlovely streets which intervene between the railway station and the central part of the town, will find, when he has reached the latter, something between it and the river to reward him for his pains. This is a remarkable specimen, in very fair preservation, of the older English domestic architecture. It is called the Old Hall, or Manor House, and John of Gaunt is popularly indicated as its builder; but it may perhaps be doubted whether the greater part, at least, does not belong to a rather later date. The house, which is of considerable size, stands at the end of a kind of open courtyard surrounded by cottages. Its general plan is that of a long central block from which two wings project at right angles. The former is chiefly—at any rate, in the upper portion—of timber-work; the latter are mainly built of brick. The mansion has suffered considerably from the effects of time and neglect, but it has been to some extent restored of late years, and portions of it are still either inhabited or in use. About a century and a half since it was the residence of one Sir Neville Hickman, but since his death it has served various purposes, one part for a time having been converted into a theatre.
The tidal river below Gainsborough passes on through scenery less and less interesting. After a time it ceases to divide the county of Nottingham from Lincoln, and is bordered on both banks by the latter. The district to the west is called the Island of Axholme. This, “though now containing some of the richest land perhaps in the kingdom, was formerly one continued fen, occasioned by the silt thrown up the Trent with the tides of the Humber. This, obstructing the free passage of the Dun and the Idle, forced back their waters over the circumjacent lands, so that the higher central parts formed an island, which appellation they still retain. From this circumstance it became a place so deplorable that Roger, Lord Mowbray, an eminent baron in the time of King Henry II., adhering to the interests of the younger Henry, who took up arms against his father, repaired with his retainers to this spot, fortified an old castle, and for some time set at defiance the king’s forces who were sent to reduce him to obedience.”[4]
The authority just quoted tells us that an attempt to regulate the drainage of Axholme was made so long since as the reign of Henry V. by one of the Abbots of Selby, who constructed “a long sluice of wood” upon the Trent “at the head of a certain sewer called the Maredyke,” and this he did “of his free goodwill and charity for the care of the country.” This was destroyed of malicious purpose in the days of his successor, who rebuilt the same of stone. But the chief reclamation of land, not only in the marshes of Axholme, but also in the adjacent fens called Dikes Mersh and Hatfield Chase, in the county of York, was undertaken in the earlier part of the reign of Charles I., when a contract bearing date May 24, 1646, was made with Cornelius Vermuden, which was successfully carried out during the next five years, so that many thousand acres of land were made available for agricultural purposes—“the waters which usually overflowed the whole level being conveyed into the river Trent, through Snow sewer and Althorpe river by a sluice, which opened out the drained water at every ebb, and kept back the tides upon all comings-in thereof.”
The confluence of the Trent with the Humber takes place near Alkborough, “where Dr. Stukeley places the Aquis of Ravennas, having discovered a Roman castrum and a vicinal road. The Roman castle is square, 300 feet each side, the entrance north, the west side is objected to the steep cliff hanging over the Trent, which here falls into the Humber; for this castle is very conveniently placed in the north-west angle of Lincolnshire, as a watch-tower over all Nottingham and Yorkshire, which it surveys. I am told the camp is now called Countess Close, and they say a Countess of Warwick lived there, perhaps owned the estate; but there are no marks of building, nor, I believe, ever were. The vallum and ditch were very perfect. Before the north entrance is a square plot, called the Green, where I suppose the Roman soldiers lay pro castris. In it is a round walk, formed into a labyrinth, which they call ‘Julian’s Bower.’”
So, where Trent and Ouse unite to form the broad and “storming Humber,” that “keeps the Scythian’s name,” our survey ends; the rivers have now become an estuary, and that, as another writer will presently show, soon begins to open out towards the sea, along which the vessels come and go to “merchandising Hull” and other ports which during this century have risen into notice.
T. G. Bonney.