Part 15

North and South Muskham lie off the road to the right, and are not remarkable, except perhaps for the fact that a centenarian, in the person of Thomas Seals of Grassthorpe, who died in 1802, age 106, lies in North Muskham churchyard. Cromwell, on the other hand, which now comes in sight, although now a commonplace roadside village of uninteresting, modern, red-brick cottages, with an old, but not remarkable, church, has a place in history. According to Carlyle, “the small parish of Cromwell, or Crumwell (the well of Crum, whatever that may be), not far from the left bank of the Trent, simple worshippers still doing in it some kind of divine service every Sunday,” was the original home of the Cromwell family, from which the great Protector sprang. “From this,” he adds, “without any ghost to teach us, we can understand that the Cromwell kindred all got their name.” But the hero-worshipper will look in vain for anything at Cromwell to connect the place with that family. Not even a tablet in the church; nothing, in fact, save the name itself survives.

Here is a blacksmith’s forge, with the design of a huge horseshoe encompasing the door, and this inscription:—

“F. NAYLOR Blacksmith

Gentlemen, as you pass by, Upon this shoe pray cast an eye. I’ll make it wider, I’ll ease the horse and please the rider. If lame from shoeing, as they often are You may have them eased with the greatest care.”

Hence to Carlton-upon-Trent, Sutton-upon-Trent, Scarthing Moor, and Tuxford is an easy transition of nearly eight miles, with little scenery or history on the way. An old posting-house, now retired into private life, the level-crossing of Crow Park, and an old roadside inn, the “Nag’s Head,” beside it are all the objects of interest at Carlton; while Sutton is scarce more than a name, so far as the traveller along the road is concerned.

Weston, a village at a bend and dip of the road, stands by what was once Scarthing Moor, whose famous inn, the “Black Lion,” is now, like the old-time festivities of Sutton-on-Trent, only a memory. The farmers and cottagers of Sutton-on-Trent long preserved the spring-time custom of welcoming the coaches, and freely feasting guards, coachmen, and passengers. It was an annual week’s merrymaking, and young and old united to keep it up. Coaches were compelled to stop in the village street, and every one was invited to partake of the good things spread out upon a tray covered with a beautiful damask napkin on which were attractively displayed plum-cakes, tartlets, gingerbread, exquisite home-made bread and biscuits, ale, currant and gooseberry wines, cherry-brandy, and sometimes spirits. These in old-fashioned glass jugs, embossed with figures, had a most pleasing effect. As to the contents, they were superlative. Such ale! such currant-wine! such cherry-brandy! Half a dozen damsels, all enchanting young people, neatly clad, rather shy, but courteously importunate plied the passengers.

“Eat and drink you must,” says one who partook of these _al fresco_ hospitalities. “I tasted all. How could I resist the winning manners of the rustics, with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes? My poor stomach, not used to such luxuries and extraordinaries at eleven o’clock in the morning, was, however, in fine agitation the remainder of the ride, fifty miles. Neither time nor entreaties can prevent their solicitations; they are issued to reward the men for trifling kindnesses occasionally granted.”

“Scarthing Moor” is a name of somewhat terrifying sound; but, as with all the “moors” met with on the Great North Road, enclosure and cultivation have entirely changed its character, and the “moor” is just a stretch of fields undistinguishable from the surrounding country. It leads presently to the little town of Tuxford-in-the-Clay, approached up a steep rise passing under the bridge of the Lincolnshire and East Coast Railway, and in view of Tuxford’s Great Northern Station, away on the right, perched on a windy and uncomfortable-looking ridge. A red rash of recent brick cottages has broken out at the foot of the rise, but Tuxford itself, on the crest of the hill, seems unchanged since coaching days, except that the traffic which then enlivened it has gone. It is a gaunt, lifeless place, in spite of its three railway stations, and stands where the roads cross on the height, and the church, the “Newcastle Arms,” another inn which arrogates the title of “The Hotel,” and the private houses and shops of the decayed town face a wide open street, and all shiver in company. But Tuxford has seen gorgeous sights in its time. Witness the gay and lengthy cavalcade that “lay” here in the July of 1503, when the Princess Margaret was on her way to her marriage with the king of Scotland. The princess stayed at the “Crown,” demolished in 1587 by one of the storms which hill-top Tuxford knows so well, and leaving us the poorer by one ancient hostelry. Not that it would have survived to this day had there been no storm, for the town itself was destroyed by fire at a much later date, in 1702.

The “Newcastle Arms” is one of those old houses built for the reception of many and wealthy travellers in the Augustan age of the road, and is by consequence many sizes too large for present needs, so that a portion of the house is set apart for offices quite unconnected with hotel business. Even the roomy old church away on the other side of the broad road seems on too large a scale for Tuxford, as it is, and the stone effigies of the Longvilliers and the mouldy hatchments of later families hanging on the walls of its bare chapels tell a tale of vanished greatness. There is a curious and clumsy carving in this church, representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. The Saint is shown on his gridiron (which resembles nothing so much as a ladder) and wears a pleased expression, as though he rather liked the process of being grilled, while one tormentor is turning him and another blowing up the fire with a pair of bellows.

After the church, the old red-brick grammar-school, founded by “Carolo Read” in 1669, is the most interesting building in Tuxford. “What God hath built, let no man destroy,” says the inscription over the entrance, placed there, no doubt, by the donor with a vivid recollection of the destruction wrought in the Civil War of some twenty years before.

The road leaves Tuxford steeply downhill and facing another hill. Descending this, the villages of East and West Markham are just visible, right and left; West Markham with a hideous church like a Greek temple, its green copper dome conspicuous for a long distance. At the foot of Cleveland Hill, as it is called, is, or was, Markham Moor, for it was enclosed in 1810, with the great “Markham Moor Inn,” now looking very forlorn and lonely, standing at the fall of the roads, where the turnpike gate used to be, and where the Worksop road goes off to the left, and a battered pillar of grey stone with a now illegible inscription stands. This may or may not be the “Rebel Stone,” spoken of in old county histories as standing by the wayside, bearing the inscription, “Here lieth the Body of a Rebel, 1746.”

Beyond this, again, is Gamston, a still decaying village, its red-brick houses ruined or empty, the wayside forge closed and the handsome old church on a hillock but sparsely attended; the whole a picture of the failure and neglect which descended upon the roadside villages fifty years ago. Many have found other vocations, but Gamston is not of them.

For some one hundred and fifty years the Great North Road has gone through Tuxford to East Retford and Barnby Moor; but this is not the original road. That has to be sought, half-deserted, away to the left. There is much romance on that old way, which is one of several derelict branching roads just here. The time seems to be approaching when this original road will be restored, to effect a relief to the heavy traffic through Retford.

We may branch off for the exploration of the old road either at Markham Moor or at Gamston. Either turning will bring us in two and a half miles to Jockey House, now a farmhouse, but once an inn at what were cross-roads. Two of these roads are grass tracks, but the old Great North Road on to Rushy Inn and Barnby Moor is quite good, although very little used.

A substantial stone pillar stands at the corner of the cross-roads opposite the Jockey House, inscribed:—

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.

[Picture: Jockey House]

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.

[Picture: An Old Postboy: John Blagg]

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.

[Picture: Scrooby Church]

From hence the bleak hamlets of Torworth and Ranskill lead to Scrooby, set amidst the heathy vale of the winding Idle, which sends its silver threads in aimless fashion amidst the meadows. Here the road leaves Nottinghamshire and enters Yorkshire. Beside the road at the little rise called Scrooby Top, stands a farmhouse, once the old Scrooby Inn, kept by Thomas Fisher as a kind of half-way house between Bawtry and Barnby Moor, and calculated to intercept the posting business of the “Bell” and of the Bawtry inns. Competition was keen-edged on the roads in those times.

[Picture: Scrooby Manor House]

There seems to have once been a turnpike gate at Scrooby, for a murder was committed there in 1779, when John Spencer, a shepherd, calling up William Geadon, the turnpike man, one July night under the pretence of having some cattle to go through, knocked him down and killed him with a hedge-stake and then went upstairs and murdered the turnpike man’s mother. Spencer was hanged at Nottingham, and gibbeted on the scene of his crime. The stump of the gibbet was still visible in 1833.

This is the place whence came the chief among the “Pilgrim Fathers” who at last, in 1620, succeeded in leaving England in the _Mayflower_, for America. Scrooby is the place of origin of that Separatist Church which refused allegiance to the Church of England. Here lived William Brewster, son of the bailiff of Scrooby Manor, once a Palace of the Archbishops of York. In those times the Great North Road wandered, as a lane, down through Scrooby village, and all traffic went this way. William Brewster the elder, bailiff and postmaster, was a government servant who kept relays of horses primarily for the use of State messengers. His salary was “twenty pence a day”; the equivalent of about £300 per annum of our money. Although very definite regulations were laid down by the Board of Posts for the conduct of this service, they were not strictly observed, and a postmaster often traded for himself as well, keeping horses for hire and being an innkeeper as well.

At any rate, the Brewsters were considerable people; and William the elder could afford to send his son to Peterhouse, Cambridge, and later had sufficient influence to secure him service with one of Queen Elizabeth’s Secretaries of State in Holland. But the Secretary fell into disgrace, and young William’s diplomatic career ended at an early age.

He returned home to Scrooby, where he found employment with his father, and eventually succeeded him, in 1594, holding the position of postmaster for seventeen years.

Let us see, from one surviving record, what kind of business was his, and how prosperous he must have been apart from his official emoluments. One of his guests, as virtually an innkeeper, was Sir Timothy Hutton, in 1605. Sir Timothy paid him, for guide and conveyance to Tuxford, 10s., and for candle, supper and breakfast 7s. 6d. On his return journey he paid 8s. for horses to Doncaster, and a threepenny tip to the ostler.

Meanwhile, Brewster, nourished in that old nest of Archbishops, had imbibed distinctly anti-episcopal ideas, probably in Holland. His activities in founding the Separatist Church led to his resignation of the postmaster’s office in 1607. In that old Manor House where he lived assembled others of his ways of thought: the Revd. Mr. Clifton, rector of Babworth, near Retford, William Bradford of Austerfield, John Smyth, and other shining lights and painful and austere persons. William Bradford records how the congregation “met ordinarily at William Brewster’s house on the Lord’s Day; and with great love he entertained them when they came, making provision for them, to his great charge.”

They would not attend services at the parish church; an offence then punishable by fine and imprisonment, and thus, persecuted, there was no ultimate course but to leave the country: itself not for some time permitted. “They were,” wrote William Bradford, “hunted and persecuted on every side. Some were taken and clapt up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched, night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to fly and leave their houses and habitations and the means of their livelihood.”

The Manor Farm, where these early developments of the Puritan movement took place, and where the Brewsters lived, remains in part, and bears an explanatory bronze tablet placed there by the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Massachusetts. And there, too, near the road, stands Scrooby church, rather dilapidated, with its stone spire, much the same as ever.

[Picture: The Stables, Scrooby Manor House]