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GREAT NORTH ROAD, BAWTRY, TICKHILL, THRYBERGH
In Edwardian times the story of the tour began thus -
"ONE may call and justify this", says sententious Fuller, "to be the best shire in England ;" and he adds, with a quaint reference to Tully's orations - optima quae longissima - the best which is the longest. Now while professing every regard for Fuller, whose little quirks are not to be handled by the world's blunt thumb and finger, but should be accepted gratefully as pretty coruscations in a biographical waste which he might have left so arid, with all gratitude and love, I say, for my old friend and comrade, I protest strenuously against the gauge which he adopts. For does one measure Madonna with a foot rule, or estimate a mighty warrior by inches? Here is a shire which from the first twilight of our stormy history has caught all men's imagination by the strength and vigour of its life, a stage on which the grandest dramas have been played out with pomp and tragedy, a soil which has been drenched through and through by the very noblest blood in England, a sturdy bulwark thrust well nigh across the whole width of the country in the track of Scotch invasion, a land of tradition, of romance, and one withal of beauty so great and varied, so rare a medley of exquisite river valleys falling out of wild moorland hills, of high grassy dales along the wind-swept mountains, and of stern seacoast as can be matched only in one other shire. If life in Yorkshire had been tame throughout all history, if its dalesmen had been peaceful shepherds and its barons ready to give unquestioning loyalty to every king who sat at Westminster, if its townsmen had been placid traders and its great forests had never bred an outlaw, yet men would have wandered over its mountains and gazed down its valleys with delight for their very beauty. To look on Wharfe stealing beneath Barden Woods, or to watch Swale rushing black and swollen out of the highlands, must have been a pleasure even if those rivers flowed through wildernesses where man had never dwelt. But as it is, the natural charm is stung into enthusiasm by some poignancy of human interest which clings to every mile of the vast area of Yorkshire, making of that county not only an epitome of English history, but more than that, a monument of fierce passions and bloody tragedies, of cruel raids and gallant expeditions, which cries out loudly for our sympathy and interest even in these days of peace. For many a century Yorkshire life was a splendid pageant; and though the banners and the pennants have long since swept away elsewhere, though the dales are silent which used to echo with the clank of spears or harness, and the daws nest freely in the roofless castles of Scrope and Mowbray, or defile the sacred precincts of Fountains and of Rievaulx, still those who listen rightly may catch some echo of the distant music, clear and ringing through all the generations which have come and gone. A very little fancy will people those valleys once more with the musters of sturdy yeomen who rode to Bannockburn or Flodden, will raise again the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ, or call up the picture of the first messengers spurring into York from the field of Marston Moor, where, through the long summer evening, the citizens knelt praying in their churches that they might be spared that terror which was surely falling on them.
The Great North Road
 Ah, great old days! I shall lose myself in retrospect if I do not check the rush of memories which assails me as I set foot on Yorkshire soil. It was Fuller who misled me; and probably I have said enough to show what it was that distressed me in his ranking this great county by its miles and acres. There was time to make the protest, for I am not in Yorkshire yet, though running fast a-wheel along the last few miles of that highway which goes northwards through Grantham, Stamford, Newark and a dozen other famous towns, and is yet known commonly as the Great North Road. Whether it was great or otherwise is of little moment now, except to cyclists and ragged beggarmen; for they alone out of the whole community travel its deserted ways which were once so full of noisy life, and mark how the ancient wayside inns have lost their occupation and descended into farms or cottages; while as each easy hill surmounted discloses new lengths of the broad old highway running straight and smooth between wide grassy borders, the very spaciousness and emptiness of the road possess a certain dignity and grandeur which are suggestive of long vanished pomps and noble spectacles such as we shall never see again. It was not yonder sleepy farmer jogging home from Doncaster in his gig, that the makers of this highway had in mind; nor was it the herdsman who walks cautiously before his sheep, checking them with his staff in front while his dog brings up all stragglers in the rear. It was for quite other travellers that the width and length of the Great North Road were designed, for Roman armies marching northwards where their greatest peril always lay, for the progresses of kings bent on hunting in the great forests north of [the River] Trent, or called hastily to arms by some revolt of Barons whose power was regal and whose loyalty a phrase, for bands of pilgrims journeying to the shrines of St. John of Beverley or St. Wilfrid of Ripon or to the Roode of Doncaster "at the brigge end," places so holy that in the old days when faith was living they drew towards them vast numbers of strong men and tender women submitting voluntarily to dangers and privations such as even money would scarce tempt us to undergo. It was for packhorses with their high-piled burdens, for stage wagons like that which Roderick Random chased so many weary miles afoot, agreeing at last to pay the wagon master ten shillings for his passage to London, on the understanding that when he was disposed to walk, his friend Strap should get in and ride in his place. It was even more particularly designed for post chaises, such as that in which Mrs. Shandy, Tristram's excellent mother, used to drag her reluctant husband up to London under that queer clause in her marriage settlement; but, most of all, the makers of the road as we now see it had in mind stage coaches, like the "Regent", which worthy old John Barker drove for many a year from the "George and Blue Boar" in Holborn to Grantham within the day, daunted by neither floods nor snow, so long as his team of greys or chestnuts could plunge or stagger through. And if it was for coaches that this great roadway was designed, it was surely in a sense designed for robbers too; or at any rate it served their purpose admirably. In fact the whole North Road had a somewhat unsavoury reputation, and those who travelled by it went in constant peril. "The York coach not forty yards before me," wrote Lady Anne Irwin to her father, the Earl of Carlisle, in April, 1776, "...was stopped and robbed. I saw the rogues do it, and could expect nothing less myself, having no other guard than Tom Bulfin; but upon seeing him armed, they rid off with such violence, either on purpose or design, they had near thrown Tom from his horse. Thus I fortunately escaped, but they took in another stage coach about a hundred yards behind me and got a good booty, two watches and above twenty pounds. People have seldom much money going from London, especially those that pay all their debts there" surely the gentlemen of the road need not have troubled their heads about this small minority of the population, "but I was charged with a commission to your lordship . . . and have in bank-bills and money near £160 to pay you." Happy Lady Anne to keep this heavy purse, while lighter ones were being handed out in her very sight! Lucky Tom Bulfin to escape with a shaking! Misfortunate robbers, who gained £20 and missed eight times as much! How our little chances in life go by without our knowing it! Well, let us be grateful that the roads are safe today; for even a cyclist, who, I take it, comes nearer to the vacuus viator [empty traveller] of an older age than anybody else among us, would hardly like turning out his empty pockets at the bidding of a dirty footpad.
Somewhere on the road, not very far from Bawtry, the Earl of Dumfries was robbed in November 1649. At least he said he was, for the two men whom he accused declared it was the most innocent matter in the world! His lordship with his servant was riding over the corn. They asked him to desist: whereupon the Earl got down and walked away without a word. His servant did the same. The two horses were left straying in the road: and they, good honest men, were taking them, for greater safety, to the pound! I blush for humanity when I add that they were not believed. But how the North Road is haunted by the phantoms of all successive ages! Deserted, lonely highway! What tragedies has it not witnessed! Even in this blithe summer sunshine, when the scent of the hawthorn is blown across my track from every hedge, when the wood pigeons are calling in the cool woods, and there is movement far and wide over all the face of the level country, I cannot ride along without finding a hundred recollections chase each other through my memory. Was it not upon this highway that the second Richard was hurried secretly down from London after Bolingbroke had stripped him of his crown, poor, friendless monarch, travelling to an end so doubtful that as he lay in state no more than his face could be exposed? How often this country must have been ravaged by triumphant men at arms led by Warwick, the great Kingmaker, marching north to Middleham or Raby; or by the fierce Edward, who won his throne at Towton Moor, not twenty miles from here, where the cause of the Red Rose went down in seas of blood and the little River Cock ran crimson underneath the corpses heaped up in the snow! How those who dwelt by the wayside on this road must have known his features, and must have known too his saintly rival, Henry, that gentle kingly man who, as Hall tells us, deemed that by "his trouble and adversitie his synnes were to him forgotten and forgeven" and whom the men of the north country loved with such devotion that they built shrines in his memory and prayed to him as to a saint, long years after he came to his solitary and unhappy end! Why, there is scarce a king in all our history whom this road has not seen riding by amid a gallant company, nor any tragedy which has not sent its fugitives skulking at nightfall along the grass borders in the shadow of the hedge.
Bawtry
But here is Bawtry breaking in upon my gloomy memories, a red-tiled cheerful town, aligning itself along the North Road with a frank admission
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The first house after crossing the border at Bawtry
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that it owes not only its birth, but its continued existence to that great highway. I am told that it was once a seat of commerce, catching the stream which from very early times has flowed out of the factory districts of the West Riding towards the shipping ports upon the Humber. It may be so; but I look around at the long empty street, scarce more than a double line of houses following the winding of the highway, and I doubt the magnitude of the commerce. At any rate, Bawtry is nothing now but a resting place for travellers; and for those who come north with the intention of seeing Yorkshire it is the most appropriate of all gateways to the county. For here, in the ancient days of royal progresses, the sheriff and gentlemen of the land of broad acres used to meet their sovereign, greeting him with their loyal salutations on the very border. Many a gallant troop of courtiers rode down this street, not all of whom, as we may very well surmise, were pleased to see their monarch coming. For strange things went on among the baronage north of [the River] Trent. There were those among them who cared little for the authority of any king, and were for shaking off his yoke whenever he showed a tendency to disagree with them, and there were others of less strength whose loyalty was worth no more. So that when these happy meetings occurred between the sovereign and his loving subjects, the old street of Bawtry must have witnessed strange scenes of dissimulation and veiled menace.
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Bawtry’s main street of former coaching inns (2011)
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Bradshaw’s Railways Guide for BAWTRY in 1866
Population 1,011. A telegraph station. Hotel-Crown. Market Day-Thursday. Fairs-Whitsun Thursday, and Nov 22nd
This is a small market town, and contains a Gothic church, built of Roche Abbey limestone, much esteemed by sculptors. In the vicinity are Bawtry Hall, seat of Dowager Lady Galway, Mission Carr, which is so level "that a base line for the grand survey, was measured on it," the ruined castle and priory of Tickhill, which was built by Roger de Busli, but demolished by the parliamentarians. In the fine old church are some beautiful monuments.
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But I cannot stand here in the sun speculating upon the precise worth of the loyal professions of men who have been dust for three centuries and more. I have ridden far, and am going into the "Crown", that picturesque old hostelry, for some refreshment, over which the proverbial saying about the town warns me not to hurry, lest I be overtaken by the fate of "the saddler of Bawtry, who was hanged for leaving his liquor". I vow he would have saved his life had he been a cyclist, and ridden twenty miles along the Great North Road on a warm morning. But who was he? I am sorry that I do not know; for even those local authorities who might be expected to have certain information on a point so interesting disagree entirely among themselves. What is certain, however, is that a traveller who carried a good deal of money in his saddle-bags, and was on his way to Doncaster, paused at Bawtry to refresh himself and to have some alteration made in his saddle, which galled his horse's back. He might have spared the saddler's fee, had he known that as he rode out of Bawtry he would be robbed near the King's Wood, which was a nice convenient shelter, often used for cover by gentlemen waiting to accost travellers. Now, instead of going on to Doncaster, when his saddle bags had been lightened and his horse's burden eased, the traveller returned to Bawtry in great indignation; and making at once for the dwelling of the saddler, he found a tankard of ale which he had bestowed upon the fellow, to cement good feeling before departure, standing still untouched, while the saddler was nowhere to be found. That a man in Bawtry should leave his liquor to go flat was strange and suspicious. The country was scoured, the saddler was caught, and very soon afterwards hung at York. As I look through the glass at the bottom of my tankard, tilted high above my chin, I declare he got no more than his deserts.
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Crown Hotel, Bawtry (2011)
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This King's Wood at the end of Bawtry Lane, where our traveller came to grief, was a place of evil reputation. I have passed it at nightfall not without a qualm, half fancying that I saw a horseman drawn up on the little piece of greensward in the shadow of the hedge. It is not night yet, nor near it; but I will not go that way. I will make a circuit, and reach Doncaster through some pretty places that I wot of which have no evil memories; and so I turn out of Bawtry half way up the north side of its straggling street, calling to mind as I mount a hill and see the old church below me, that other noted resident who came to an end as sad and much more painful than the saddler, one Arthur Thistlewood, who laid a plot to kill a whole British Cabinet at once, and was cut in pieces for his pains, you may see the axe at Newgate yet. I understand that Bawtry people cherish his memory; but for my part I am glad to pass out of the town which reminds me of him.
Tickhill
How far away seem all conspiracies and treasons, as I ride once more into the open country through the hush of the summer afternoon! The high green grass is turning into bronze all over the face of the undulating country. The shadow of cool woods lies across the road. A little wind comes laden with sweet scents of hawthorn, and under the bushes a weary woman sits and fans herself, while her sodden husband lies back upon the bank asleep. Other wayfarers there are none; and so I ride on silently until, topping the crest of a little hill, I see a wide plain stretched out before me with the grand tower of Tickhill Church standing up no more than a mile away. Behind the tower there are the green ridges of swelling hills; and towards the left, on the summit of a tree-clad mound, a solitary flagstaff marks the spot where from the earliest times there stood a noble castle, centre of an inheritance so splendid as to be often chosen for a queen's dowry, an "honour" which included portions of five counties, and which when not held by royalty itself, was always in the hands of great and noble barons.
In fact this quiet village, famed now chiefly for its walnuts, was one of the principal resorts of chivalry in Britain, being in the immediate neighbourhood of one of the only five places licensed by King Richard I for holding tourneys when after his return from captivity he began to give encouragement to martial exercises. Not even the ground on which these splendid jousts were held can be identified today. The long and goodly village streets, through which so often the pennants of half the nobility of northern England must have fluttered, are occupied by flocks of ducks waddling from the pond upon the common, where a row of pollard willows bordering a sedgy stream invites the grazing cattle to stand within cool shade, flicking their tails drowsily. On the castle mound there are but few walls left; only a handsome gateway reminds us of the warriors who rode in and out beneath it. But for this gateway, it would be difficult to see in Tickhill an ancient place of arms. Its moat girdles the castle mound, still full of water as it used to be, a wide brown waterway threading the woodland which has invested the hillside. It lies there cool and beautiful in the hot afternoon, shot over with gold flashes which penetrate the overarching trees; but it has no terrors now, unless it be for evil children, bird's-nesting unlawfully upon the slopes. Ah, how far away seem those days, just after Marston Moor, when a garrison of rake-helly cavaliers held the ancient fortress, palisaded and defended by a strong moat and counterscarp, and were "exceedingly oppressive" to the country round. But Colonel Lilbourn came that way; and when he passed, the last vestiges of feudal England at Tickhill had disappeared for ever, and that deep peace had fallen on the country villages in which they are buried even yet.
more soon....
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Large portions of this page are based upon the book “Highways and Byways in Yorkshire” by Arthur H Norway; 1899
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