Shireoaks in 1900
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The following extract from the Leeds Mercury describes Shireoaks as it was in 1900.
At Shireoaks I have completed the 3961/2th mile of my Itinerary; and from this point I must needs turn northward. Shireoaks is said to be a Nottinghamshire place, though Yorkshire has undoubtedly a share in it. About two miles from the church was a celebrated old oak tree which threw its branches over three counties - Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire - so that we and our Broad Acres could lay claim to a third part of the tree. Its position was mid-way between Thorpe Salvin in Yorkshire and Whitwell in Derbyshire, a tongue of Nottinghamshire licking the ground at that spot. Yet its trunk was in no particular parish. The Shire-oak may therefore be regarded as an outpost of the Sherwood Forest and Dukeries Oaks, which for long have ranked among the finest trees in the country. At one time it may have had a reputation similar to the Shambles, Greenwell, Raysdale, Seven Sisters, Cowthorpe, Major, or King's Oak. And the Shire-oak may have been flourishing there before the counties were staked or apportioned out. In default of a stream, a fence, or a wood, it stood out isolated as a suitable landmark, and answered every purpose for a boundary mark.
Shireoaks, like Sevenoaks, Nine Elms, and Barkston Ash, makes an interesting adjectival component of a placename; and at Headingley there is the Skyrack, or Shire-oak, which, like the ash at Barkston, gave its name to a very ancient division known as a wapentake.
Shireoaks railway station and the inn are a wedded pair: a happy arrangement of matters for the collier who travels to and fro daily, chiefly between Worksop and here. The landlord supposes his sign - the sign of the oak - to be a work of art; at any rate, I have no doubt that it gives an excellent idea of what the famous old tree was like. Unhappily it decayed, and I think there are persons living who saw it removed, and a new tree planted in its place. A goodly form has the old veteran as pictured on the sign, which is now the worse for wear; but surely there was no excuse for printing the names of the three shires in bold red capitals on its roots.
Worsop town is three miles away, the next station to Shireoaks on the Great Central Railway. I am not well up in the biography of Charles Peace, nor have I any inclination to renew my aquaintance with it; but that notorious personification of dis-peace once leaped from a train at Shireoaks while he was being conveyed under custody to Sheffield. In all probability he dreaded the idea of passing through his native parish of Darnall, the third station from here, where he began his innocent little life under a mother's anxious care. The Shireoaks folk seem proud to relate to this incident.
The original village of Shireoaks was very small, with a few red farms clustering round a paltry little church which is now used as a schoolhouse. The finding of coal and the acquirement of facilities for working it opened out the prospect of a prosperous career for the village.
To-day it is noted for its colliery, and its church. The church is ornamental, well built, and spacious, looking as though it had been imported from a fashionable watering-place or suburb. Certainly there is nothing to match it here, for the colliery settlement consists chiefly of one painfully long row of red brick dwellings, which claim to be superior, I daresay, to thatched cottages. The tourist could not possibly "take to" them: but they have charms for colliers. On the whole, they do look clean, and some of them have flower-pots and bird cages in their windows.
Shireoaks to Tickhill
I cross the Sheffield and Worksop turnpike at Gateford Common. To my left is an ancient fox-covert, gay with healthy young verdure. A few weeks ago the grey-barked trees and saplings, with their lean, dry branches, shivered in the sunset gleaming unhindered behind them; and the green ivy trailed disconsolate in every direction. Now all is changed, and you pause for a moment to look at the vista down the covert. The little weavers and spinners of the underworld have been very busy during the last few weeks, and have drawn a veil of delicate verdant tracery over everything. Interwoven fronds, leaves, and tendrils make a network of green in all its varied shades. You cannot fail to admire the purple-spotted leaves of the orchis and the more elaborate arum cuckoo-pint with its thin club in a capacious green spathe, like apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite. There is a path right through the heart of this covert, bordered with wild hyacinths and flowering white nettles. The myriad saplings, whose boles are like thin pillars black against the light, support a floating canopy of leaves. Hollies merge with darker firs, and there are modern bronze hues in the dog-oak. Showered over the embroidery like patines of pale gold are primroses nestling among their cool, crinkled leaves, and deftly interspersed with them are periwinkles and sweet violets. Irregularly dispersed over the wonderful ground-carpet is a hyacinthine blue mist.
A fox country? Yes, a very foxy country! It rolls away in gentle undulations, with copses, coverts, spinnies, woods, parklands, big meadows, orchards, ditches, pea and potato fields, granges, rookeries, and all the rest. Meadows slot with green and gold, studded with tiny islets of gorse overtopped by young firs, stretch away towards the woodland belts which act as a frame for them. Horses of powerful breed, their hides as tough as leather, are seen plodding across fields in white ear-caps, accompanied by not very energetic plough boys, to whom the singing lark in mid-sky has no mission.
In many of the fields are blades of wheat springing up, greener, if possible, than emeralds. Partly yellow, partly green, partly black, is this rolling country, spotted here and there by the time-stained red-lead roofs of the granges, slightly tinged with the green of mild fungus growths; while other roofs on the upland tops gleam in the solar radiance like dabs of vermilion. I am not on a turnpike road, and I am not in a country lane; it is narrow rather than broad, and it is very delightfully informal, though the abundant spines of spruce and holly look somewhat out of place. They have a green metallic glitter, which ill conforms with the startling fresh hues of May’s large family of forest children. It is questionable if a country road in the month of May would be at its best if bordered by regular parallel rows of white hawthorn, unmitigated by any of its compeers. Her we have sweetbriar, and privet, and bramble, and hawthorn, and blackthorn, and holly, and dog-oak, and honeysuckle, and climbing vetch. A certain leaf bud almost coralline in colour excites the admiration, and you are some time in realising that the common dog-oak dare pretence to such loveliness.
I dropped down to a large intercolline farm, whose excellent guard, a collie dog, was seated at the top of the granary steps, and evidently thought it his duty to keep me in check. His chest seemed to be charged with a battery, and at every exclamation his entire muscular system shook like that of a strong man in pain. I could see his loving, brown eyes, and his mushroom white teeth glitter anon, as from depressed position he cast up his face and opened his jaws in such a manner as to assure me that we could not possibly be friends this side of Sunday. For an interesting by-study, somebody might tell us how different dogs bark, and ascertain the various keys and vocal ranges distributed among them. The canine bark is full of language. There are the pleased bark, the angry bark, and the officious bark; but each dog has his own method, and some dogs have delightfully musical voices. It is a wonder that Richard Jefferies did not write a treatise or a chapter on the subject.
Opposite the stable yard, where pigeons of various breeds were having fine times of rejoicing, there was an apple orchard in full bloom, many of the opening buds as beautiful as those of some standard roses. Cocks and hens with blood-red combs have come trespassing here, also a few sheep.
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