Royals took place, which formerly would have caused the Laureate to
invoke the Sackbut, but not a line had been produced by the State Poet.”
Bousfield’s _Power of Gold_ is more literary in its form. It deals
with the warping and corrupting influence of wealth on naturally
good dispositions, and is religious in tone, as are many others of
Bousfield’s poems. Among the subscribers to the book were Michael
Thomas Sadler, M.P.; Dr. Sleath, Master of Repton; and Henry
Willoughby, M.P. One line in the poem on wealth, “To temper earth
with antepast of heaven,” suggests by its archaism that the writer
was familiar with the earlier writers of verse. It is perhaps not
without interest to mention that, as the scientific imagination of
Erasmus Darwin anticipated the invention of aeroplanes, so John Atkin
foreshadowed the era of the bicycle and motor car by his allusion to
the actual use in his time of the “velocipede”--a beast which “wanted
neither corn nor hay.”
Other local verse-writers who in this paper must be only names
are:--Matthew Unwin [1755–1786], Sidney Giles [1814–1846], Charles
Hooton [1810–1847], Edward Hind, Lucy Joynes [1781–1851], William
Calvert, John Wright, Frank Browne, Mary Ann Carter, William Powers
Smith, E. G. Pickering, Samuel Mullen, and H. Bradbury Mellors. Nor
should we forget David Love [1750–1827], packman and ballad-monger. He
was a Scotchman by birth. Two portraits of him were exhibited by the
Thoroton Society at the conversazione held in 1900.
A cursory glance at the work of our local poets will make it plain
that they reflect the dominant literary tendencies of various epochs,
“the spacious times of great Elizabeth,” when sonnets expressed the
amours and gallantries of the Queen’s Court; the dramatic impulse
and fantastic compositions of the early Stuart period; the satirical
poems of the age of Dryden; the simplicity, fondness for nature, and
reflective poetry of Wordsworth and Browning. There do not appear any
clear traces of the influence of Keats and Shelley.
It may be objected that much of the verse spoken about is not poetry
at all. But the objection is scarcely valid. Great gifts of vivid
imagination and creative genius, with the power of apt, vigorous, and
melodious expression, are granted to few. Minor writers can, however,
act the part of the ancient pædagogos by leading us on to the great
masters of thought and song; or, to vary the figure, they dig from the
deep mines of thought gems to polish and set for daily use by busy,
practical, unlearned men. They change the pure gold into current coin.
And though Spedding speaks “of the tricks of these versifying times
(about 1842) born of superficial sensibility to beauty and a turn
for setting to music the current doctrines and fashionable feelings
of the day,” it will be found that, with few exceptions, our writers
are honourably distinguished for their independence of thought, and
truthful spontaneous naturalness.
In conclusion, this paper lays no claim to exhaustive treatment of
its subject, either in respect of the writers enumerated or the
short notices of some of them. Time, space, and opportunity have been
against both the one and the other. The writer has done his work amid
a pressure of other occupations; and he craves the indulgence which is
usually shown towards errors or omissions--
“Quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura.”
If his work should be another step onwards towards a complete anthology
of the native verse, and should lead Nottinghamshire men to a fuller
knowledge and keener appreciation of their county writers, it will have
its full reward.
NOTTINGHAM
BY W. P. W. PHILLIMORE
The first historical reference to Nottingham which we possess is but a
little more than a thousand years ago, and though it is likely enough
that there were at a very much earlier date some few dwellings along
the southern slopes of the hills upon which the city stands, or cave
dwellings hewn out of the soft sandstone rock, it is unlikely that
it had become of any importance before the Saxon period, to which
it is obvious that its name, anciently Snotingaham, belongs. It is
apparently tribal in its origin, indicating the home or dwelling of
the descendants of Snod; possibly the early form of our modern surname
of Snow. There are but few other places in England whose names may
have a similar origin. In Kent we find Snode Bridge and Snodland, in
Dorset is Nottington, and in Hampshire, a few miles west of Andover,
is an obscure hamlet called Snottington. Snenton, now an integral part
of Nottingham, is said to have the same derivation, and the local
historians identify it with the Notintone of Domesday. Medieval writers
have ascribed a much greater antiquity to Nottingham, and have given
it the strange name of Tiguocobauc, said to mean a place of caves.
The tradition of King Ebranc and of the slaughter of the Britons here
points to a belief in medieval days in the great antiquity of the town.
But beyond the existence of cave dwellings, which after all may be
quite modern in origin, and the discovery of a few bronze implements,
we have no tangible evidence of any higher antiquity, and the physical
characteristics of the site further militate against the claim. With
the forest coming near the town on the north, and the alluvial marsh
lands on the south, the site must in early times have been very
inaccessible, a fact which doubtless attracted those who first selected
the Castle rock as a military stronghold. The Castle and St. Mary’s and
Snenton churches form the ends of a double horseshoe. Between them lies
the town facing the south, with the rock dwellings of Snenton Hermitage
at one end, and those under the Castle rock, known in later times
as the Papist Holes, at the other end. Until destroyed by the Great
Northern Railway extensions in recent years, the rock dwellings at the
foot of the rock at Snenton, on which stands St. Stephen’s Church, were
an interesting characteristic of the village.
The Danish invasion of Mercia brought Nottingham into prominence.
It became one of the five principal towns of the Danelagh--Derby,
Leicester, Lincoln, and Stamford, being the other four--and though the
Danish dominion was not of long duration, it left a very permanent
mark on the town. The gateways in the town walls were known as “Bars,”
instead of “Gates” as in the south of England, and the last of these,
Chapel Bar, pulled down in the eighteenth century, still survives in
name, forming a familiar part of the great western outlet of the town.
The other trace of the Danish occupation is the almost universal use
of “Gate” instead of “Street.” Two hundred years ago the only streets
were Stoney Street and Pepper Street, the other principal thoroughfares
being known as Gates or Rows, while the lesser ones were called Lanes.
Wheeler Gate, Goose Gate, Peter Gate, Mary Gate, Long Row, Smithy Row,
and Friar Lane are familiar to all Nottingham people, and within the
last half century we still had Sheep Lane and Chandlers’ Lane. These
last have given place to Market Street and Victoria Street, just as in
the previous century Sadler Gate, the continuation of Bridlesmith Gate,
very inappropriately became High Street, and Cow Lane and Girdlesmith
Gate were renamed Clumber Street and Pelham Street.
Although there was right in the centre of the town one of the largest
market-places in the kingdom, the ways out in every direction were
remarkably narrow, and even within recent years two carts could not
pass one another in Pelham Street, the principal eastern exit. The
widening of Cow Lane, now Clumber Street, in the eighteenth century,
followed by the demolition of Chapel Bar, improving the ways out on the
north and west, were the earliest attempts at town improvement. The
latter half of the nineteenth century saw the construction of Albert
Street and the widening of Lister Gate on the south, the conversion of
Chandlers’ Lane into Victoria Street, and the change in Sheep Lane by
widening it so as to form Market Street. King Street and the widening
of Wheeler Gate are the most recent of the street improvements in the
centre of the town.
As a military post in early times, Nottingham was of considerable
importance. The great rock, upon which stood the Castle, with its
natural means of defence, was obviously well suited for a military
stronghold. The Castle, built or rebuilt by William the Conqueror, was
guarded by William Peverel, and somewhat more than a hundred years
later it became the stronghold of John, when Earl of Mortein, in his
rebellion against his brother, King Richard I, by whom it was besieged
in 1194. It was at Nottingham Castle, in 1330, that Edward III struck
the blow which ended the usurpation of Isabella and Mortimer, through
the help of Eland, the Governor, who revealed to him the existence of
the secret passage down into the valley of the Leen, which ever since
has borne the name of Mortimer’s Hole, now so familiar to Nottingham
people. Throughout his reign Edward III was often at Nottingham Castle,
and held some of his Parliaments here. It continued to be a royal
fortress and residence, but after the Wars of the Roses was allowed
to fall into decay. From the description which Leland the antiquary
gives of it in the reign of Henry VIII, the buildings must have been
of great extent and importance, but no illustrations of it have been
preserved, and there now only remains the entrance gateway of this
famous fortress as an indication of its former greatness. A plan of it
is given in the local histories, upon which the late Mr. T. C. Hine
based an imaginative picture of it. In the reign of James I it was
granted to the Earl of Rutland, and so became private property. It was
then so ruinous that that King, on his visit to Nottingham, could find
no suitable lodging in it, and was obliged to stay in the town itself.
Only once again was Nottingham Castle concerned with military matters,
and that was in 1642, when King Charles I here raised his standard
against the Parliament. The next year it fell into the possession
of the Parliament, and was held by the famous Colonel Hutchinson,
who defended it against royalist attacks. Of the siege we have the
well-known narrative related by Mrs. Hutchinson in the _Life_
of her husband, which she wrote. After the Civil War the Castle was
dismantled, and its military history ended. It was afterwards bought
by the Duke of Newcastle, who demolished the remains, and in 1674
commenced the erection of the present stately building, which was
completed by his son in 1679, but was occupied as a residence by the
Newcastle family for hardly a hundred years, being afterwards let to
tenants. At the time of the Reform Riots in 1832, it was burnt down by
the mob, and remained a blackened ruin until, in 1878, it was acquired
on a long lease by the Corporation of Nottingham, and converted into an
art museum.
One remarkable feature continued in Nottingham right into the
eighteenth century, and that was the division of the town into the
English and French boroughs. The English part of the town was that
surrounding the mother church of St. Mary; the French, or the new town,
comprised the districts now forming the parishes of St. Peter and St.
Nicholas. For the two divisions of the borough, between which the
market-place was divided, it was customary to elect separate juries.
Indeed, the custom of electing two sheriffs and two coroners, which
prevailed until the Municipal Reform Act of 1835, has been thought to
have a similar origin.
In the middle ages Nottingham was a place of military rather than
of ecclesiastical importance. Town and county until the nineteenth
century owed allegiance to the far-off cathedral of St. Peter at
York. The Grey Friars and the White Friars, as well as the Knights of
St. John of Jerusalem, had houses here, but of these establishments
all traces save street names have long since disappeared. And of the
great priory at Lenton, founded by Peverel, there are left only the
fragments of two Norman pillars to indicate the strength and majesty
of that building. Until the last century there were but three parish
churches in the town. St. Peter’s structurally is the most ancient,
for parts of it appear to date from the twelfth century, and it may be
regarded in some respects as more interesting than the more important
church of St. Mary’s. St. Nicholas, the smallest of the three ancient
churches, demolished for military reasons in 1647, was rebuilt some
thirty years later, and is notable as being one of the comparatively
few examples there are of late seventeenth century church work built in
the pointed style. But the glory of Nottingham is the great church of
St. Mary built in the middle of the ancient English borough, its tower
rivalling in prominence the castle at the other end of the town. From
an architectural point of view this splendid cruciform church has the
advantage that, with the exception of the chancel, which was built at a
somewhat later date, the whole of it belongs to the best period of the
Perpendicular style. Its present internal characteristic, lightness,
was noted by the antiquary John Leland, in Henry VIII’s time, who
described it as having “so many fair windows that no artificer could
imagine to set more.”
In the early nineteenth century began the building of additional
churches necessitated by the growth of the town, and of these the
first was St. James on Standard Hill, which in its name commemorates
an ancient chapel that had long before disappeared. Of the many new
churches which have been built in the past century, or of the efforts
of the various nonconformist bodies who similarly have sought to supply
the religious requirements of the town, it is impossible here to do
more than allude.
The great increase of Nottingham during the past hundred years has been
due to the trade of the place, but this is no mere modern development.
In the middle ages the “little smith of Nottingham who doth the work
that no man can,” was as famous as his successors at the present day
upon whose skill depend the great staple trades of lace and hosiery.
Smithy Row, Bridlesmith Gate, Girdlesmith Gate, Bellar Gate, and
Bellfounders’ Yard point out to us where the ancient craftsmen in metal
carried on their industries. Many other trades have been carried on
from time to time, and one of these, dyeing, left us a picturesque
reminder in the fields of saffron which, in springtime and in autumn,
were, until the great extension of building on the southern side of the
town, so conspicuous a feature of the Nottingham Meadows.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century the growth and prosperity
of the town was greatly restricted by the commonable lands surrounding
it which could not be built upon; but in 1845, under an Inclosure Act,
the commonable rights were extinguished, thus permitting the needful
extension of the town. So long ago as 1787 the need of inclosure was
realised, but steadily and persistently opposed by the Corporation,
whose past action largely contributed to the creation of insanitary
areas, which in recent years have in some measure been swept away at a
vast expense, partly by railway extensions without cost to the town,
partly under improvement schemes at the expense of the ratepayer.
The population of Nottingham, less than 25,000 at the end of the
eighteenth century, has increased at least tenfold in the past hundred
years. An ancient borough by prescription, now a titular city, it
has a series of charters from the time of Henry II, and for more
than 600 years has had a mayor and the right of returning members to
Parliament. It is also a county in itself, though through the supposed
exigencies of the case the site of the Shire Hall in the middle of
the town belongs to the county. The Corporation is a very wealthy
body, possessed of large estates producing more than £30,000 a year,
besides the revenue which it draws from the profits of its commercial
undertakings, such as the trams, the gasworks, and the waterworks,
not to mention the contributions of the ratepayers, whose burdens,
despite the Corporation estates, are not less than those of other
towns. In 1877 the area of the borough was extended by the inclusion
of the neighbouring parishes of Snenton, Lenton, Radford, Basford, and
Bulwell, and in 1897 it was by royal charter created a city.
Some reference may properly be made to the individual activity of
Nottingham citizens. The religious work of the town is mainly dependent
upon voluntary contributions, and in medical matters the various
hospitals of the town form a striking testimony to this principle;
while voluntary education is well represented by the High School and
the Blue Coat School. Even the University College owes its origin to
the anonymous gift of £10,000, and it is a matter of common knowledge
that the great religious and social organisation known as the Salvation
Army, which is based wholly upon volunteer work, was founded by a
native of Nottingham. The literary activity of the town has not been
small. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Dr. Standfast, the
rector of Clifton, founded the professional library known by his name,
which is merged in Bromley House Library, established in 1816. But
even in much humbler ranks of life the value of books was recognised.
Few perhaps realise what the working classes of Nottingham did before
rate-supported libraries were started. Seventy years ago there were
at least six operatives’ libraries supported by the weekly pence of
working men, and the remarkable point about them--surprising perhaps to
modern philanthropists--is, that they were situated at obscure taverns
in some of the poorest parts of the town. That at the Rancliffe Arms,
founded in 1835, had 2200 volumes; another at the Seven Stars owned
about 1800 volumes, and the one at the Alderman Wood possessed 2150
volumes, while the Oddfellows’ Library had 2300. There was another at
the People’s Hall, and in 1836 was founded the Mechanics’ Institution,
which, with its library, lectures, and classes, has done such valuable
work for the intellectual advancement of the town, and is a centre of
great literary activity. Even the rate-supported Public Library was
based upon the old Artisans’ Library, which was founded as long ago as
1824.
At Nottingham is one of the ancient crossing places of the river
Trent, the history of which dates back about a thousand years, for the
building of a bridge here has been ascribed to Edward the Elder. The
large expanse of alluvial land between the town and the present bed of
the Trent necessitated in fact more than one bridge, as is hinted at
in the colloquial plural form, not perhaps yet obsolete, of the Trent
bridges, instead of merely Trent bridge. Passing the meadows from the
foot of St. Mary’s rock, a series of bridges carried the London road
to the narrow stone bridge of eighteen or twenty arches, which, forty
years ago, was superseded by the present bridge of stone and iron.
Medieval records have much to tell us of the building of the Trent
bridge. Then, as now, the maintenance of the bridge was provided for
without calling upon the townsmen for enforced contributions in the
shape of rates. Seven hundred years ago the care and maintenance of
the bridge was undertaken by the Hospital of St. John, in Nottingham,
and in 1231 we have the record of “indulgences” of thirteen days
given to those aiding in the building of the bridge of Hoybel at
Nottingham--doubtless the structure known in later times as the
Hethbeth bridge, a name of which the origin has not been satisfactorily
determined.
Bridges, then, were largely maintained with ecclesiastical support by
voluntary gifts, as is shown by various episcopal records granting
“indulgences” for their benefit. A chapel was commonly associated
with a bridge, and the Trent bridge, with the chapel of St. Mary at
the north end, was no exception to the rule. In 1303 John le Paumer
of Nottingham, and Alice his wife, settled property in Nottingham
amounting to the substantial annual value of £6, 13s. 5d. for the
endowment of two chaplains for a daily service in the chapel of St.
Mary at Hethbeth bridge, “for the souls of them, their ancestors,
and all Christians who assign their goods or part of them for the
maintenance of the bridge.” John le Paumer died within the next few
years, but his widow, Alice le Paumer, continued the good work, and in
1311 she obtained a grant of pontage, or the right of levying tolls on
wares brought over the bridge, in order to provide the necessary funds,
and provision was made for auditing the proceeds and the expenditure
which she incurred. For fifteen or sixteen years the work seems to
have continued under her care, for there exists in the Patent Rolls
record of various grants to this lady in connection with the bridges.
In 1314 occurs the specific statement that she was then building the
bridge of Hethbeth, and four years later that the right to take pontage
is extended for a further period of four years to provide also for
the repair of any bridge to be built between Hethbeth bridge and the
land towards “Gameleston,” now Gamston. This second bridge seems to
have been built within the space of two years, for in July 1321 it was
still spoken of as “to be built,” and in November 1323 it is stated
to be “newly built.” In 1324 Alice le Paumer received a further grant
of pontage for three years for the repair of Hethbeth bridge and “the
bridge of the new breach by the said bridge.”
It is not altogether easy to determine what these two bridges were.
Between our modern Trent bridge and the land towards Gamston there
could not have been any bridge, and the situation of the two bridges
must be sought for somewhere in the London road between the town
and West Bridgford. The Hethbeth bridge has been assumed to be, and
probably correctly, the southern part of that series of arches which
carry the roadway over the meadows to the south of the Leen. From the
alluvial conformation of the land it is not unlikely that the Trent may
have altered its course, or that it may have become divided here. If
so the old stone bridge demolished some forty years ago would be that
built by Alice le Paumer about 1321–1323, and described as the bridge
of the “new breach,” an expression perhaps indicative of some new
course then made by the Trent.
The ancient stone bridge, which the older inhabitants of the city well
remember, stood a little to the west of the present iron structure.
One or two of the arches at the southern end have been left standing,
and they indicate its width, or perhaps one might rather say its
narrowness, in medieval times, though at some later period the bridge
was widened, but not sufficiently to permit of a footpath on either
side, and the only refuge from the traffic available for pedestrians
was to be found in the angular recesses which surmounted the
buttresses. Most of the arches of the bridge were pointed and narrow,
dating probably from the time of Alice le Paumer, but those at the
northern end had been rebuilt in the seventeenth century in a wider
and rounded style. It was a picturesque and interesting structure,
and as far as traffic was concerned at the time of its demolition,
amply sufficed for the needs of the district. Only on market days
was the foot passenger troubled by the traffic across the bridge--a
great contrast to the present time, when the bridge has to serve the
requirements of the populous suburb which has taken the place of the
little country village of West Bridgford. It was in 1870 that the
present Trent bridge was opened to traffic, and shortly after the
ancient structure, which for so many centuries had served the needs of
the men of Nottingham, was removed, all save the arches, which serve as
the entrance to the riverside walk to Wilford. Those who are curious
about relics of the past may like to know that some of the stonework of
the old Trent bridge was utilised in building a new aisle to Plumtree
Church.