THE GREAT NORTH ROAD THROUGH NOTTINGHAMSHIRE by Joan Board

It is a stretch of road redolent with the footprints and wheel marks of more than one millennium.

There are buildings of remarkable longevity. Through centuries of change they provide continuity. Christmas card inns including, “the noted Eele Pye House”, retain traces of celebrities from Henry V111 through Charles 1 to Queen Victoria. In fact one hotel still entertains the ghost of Queen Jane Grey.

It is a road of intrigue and battle: Tudor spies intercepted a royal prisoner’s letters here and Cromwell trained his Model Army along the road when Civil War skirmishes were frequent. There is a Rebel Stone from Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeated army and traces of the Captain Swing riots.

Memories of stocks, ducking stools, gibbets, riding the stang and the man transported for seven years for stealing 10d. (4p) worth of sewing silk, exist alongside the time when the Bailiffs were in town to arrest the Vicar.

It is a road where speed records were broken on foot, on horseback, in Mail coaches and Monte Carlo rallies.

In short it is an adaptable road that has changed with fashions and survived them.

About the author -

Joan Board is a keen local historian and lives in Retford, close to the road. She is an English Honours graduate with long teaching experience in Grammar and Private schools as well as Colleges of Education. Her published works include short stories one of which was awarded the Charnwood Prize, together with local history articles in newspapers and County Magazines. Her two other best-selling books on the road and the Pilgrim Fathers are - “The Old North Road in Babworth Parish” and “Pilgrim Country - an A to Z Guide.”

A5. Wire bound.