Districts
Tickhill
The following extract from the Leeds Mercury detailing Tickhill as it was in 1900.
Tickhill to Bawtry
South of Tickhill town there are some singularly pretty rural scenes. The curious old water-mill (whose predecessor was mentioned in Domesday) and the large mill-dam make a lovely picture. Pollard willows shoot their green lances down towards the water from the opposite bank.
Adjacent was the frowning gate-house, the only means of approach to the castle court, with moat beneath. John o' Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, passed under it often enough when living here, and in the last episode of its history it answered to the ring of the hoofs of a charger which Oliver Cromwell rode. This gatehouse is probably the original work of Roger de Busli, for that part of the lower story which contains the two round arches is purely Norman masonry. It had no portcullis until the Decorated front with pointed arch had been introduced. At the top, on the inner side, is a mullioned window replacing a former one which had been voted dangerous, and of which it is an exact copy. Outside this gloomy, hollow structure, ever moskering away with age, and where fancy exaggerates the voices of the honest farmers talking into the voices of rank conspirators, there is a curiously carved oak Jacobean door let into the wall. It bears the inscription, "Peace and Grace be in this Place." So far as I could get to know, it was the original door of the Royal Chapel of St. Nicholas within the castle court.
The court and grounds, beautified by a lofty mound whereon stood an old Norman keep; are strictly private nowadays, belonging primarily to the Crown, and lot to the Earl of Scarbrough, whose residentiary tenant is Mrs Wright, a very old lady, the daughter of Admiral Ross. But feeling determined to ascend the donjon hill, I went in quest of Gardener Lee, who inhabits a cot in a quiet sylvan nook beyond the water-mill, about as difficult to find as a wren's nest, amid woods and gardens. I caught Lee shaving in his kitchen, an old dame crooning in a corner, and a boy doing nothing at all but getting himself ready to stare. The gardener is a crusty sort of individual, who has no sort of fancy for strangers, and therefore will not be joked by them. Moreover, he is the terror of trespassers and small boys, for he can scare demons away with his squeaky voice, and argufy with argufiers in such a cool, captious manner that objectors are glad to shuffle off the spot in the seemliest fashion possible. For half an hour I tried to drag a smile from the man's face, and - succeeded! He got himself into a glow of excitement, when, with ordnance map and compass, we were tracing the Yorkshire-Nottinghamshire border-line between Worksop and Tickhill from the top of the castle mound. This old and valued servant certainly warmed to my company before we left the mound, and would hardly part from me when I was in a hurry to get back to mine inn.
Roger de Busli a Norman noble, was invested with the Honour of Tickhill, a wide domain, which embraced part of 5 counties, and contained over 60 knights fees. Doubtless it was he threw up the conical hillock now within the castle court. The Norman curtain wall, carried up the hillock to about two thirds its height, still exists. A "chemin de ronde" goes around it, and is carried across the entrance by a bridge. The foundations left of the stone keep proclaim it to have been of the very early decagonal shape. A spiral path shaded with pendent foliage traverses the hill, affording most delightful views of the modern castle - a sort of banker's villa built out of castle material, - of the old gate-house, the castle garden and surrounding woods.
Little or nothing can at first be seen of the red brick town, but as you ascend the lofty, hoary tower of the cathedral-like church comes gradually into view, until at last you are almost level with the roof. A few stone steps lands you on the summit's greasy circle, in the centre of which there is a tall flagstaff. Trees, lilac-blossom, and shrubs crest the ring, one opening being through them so as to get a view to southward. It is a view of a rolling fox-hunting country, and you can distinctly trace the boundary-line with Nottinghamshire.
Tickhill Castle
Tickhill Castle, the key to South Yorkshire, has figured in many important English history scenes. Robert de Belesme, a successor of Roger de Busli, began to fortify it properly about the year 1100. A bad man, so 'tis said, he broke out into open rebellion against Henry I, who determined to reduce him, and did so through the bellicose Bishop of Lincoln. Henry II and his Queen. Eleanor of Aquitaine. came here, Eleanor being the foundress of the Royal Chapel of St. Nicholas, within the castle walls.
About this period Tickhill appears to have been bracketed with all the other castles of first magnitude, and, along with Nottingham Castle, went to hazardous lengths by holding out stoutly against Richard Coeur de Lion. A siege followed, conducted in person by Hugh de Pudsey, Bishop of Durham. King John was better known to the men of Tickhill than any of our own Royalty to the Leeds Loiners.
In 1254 the castle and honor of this interesting place were the dower of Eleanor, who saved the life of Edward I, her husband by sucking the poison from a grievous wound. Earl Thomas of Lancaster, who besieged Tickhill for three weeks in the reign of Edward II, used a machine which he had brought hither for hurling huge stones.
In 1372 Richard II bestowed these possessions on John o' Gaunt, Time-honoured Lancaster, whose arms are on the tower of the parish church, and who founded the adjacent hospital of Maison Dieu. As an appanage of the Duchy of Lancaster, it reverted to the Crown on the accession of Henry IV.
The closing historic scene took place during the Great Rebellion, at which time Tickhill was defended for Charles I by the Hansby family. Subsequent to the Battle of Marston Moor, the Earl of Manchester sent 200 dragoons from Doncaster, under Colonel Lilburn, to reduce this fortress. We may describe it as a politic step, since complaints were daily being lodged about increasing taxes, which particularly affected the traders in cloth. Eighty musketeers and a troop of horse turned banditti in the otherwise orderly little town, reduced it to a state of confusion and distress at which the fatuous governor, Major Monckton, connived with all his soul. Historic records do not appear to show that any siege took place at all. After a parley between the Governor and the Parliamentary Colonel Lilburn, it was agreed to surrender the castle on the following Friday afternoon, but to no other person than the august Earl of Manchester. And so it came to pass that the garrison, consisting of Major Monckton, Colonel and Major Redhead, several other officers, with their wives, 80 musketeers, and 60 horse, humbly marched out of the castle over the drawbridge when the Earl's trumpet was sounded at the gate on the day appointed. And amongst the brave troop of horse who then entered the castle, and rendered solemn thanks to god for giving us that place of so much concernment upon such easy terms, without the loss of one drop of blood, was the greatest man the good folk of Tickhill have ever doffed their hats to - Lieutenant-General Cromwell.
The artillery seized on this occasion consisted of one piece of canon, mounted, 100 muskets, with some powder to match; the provender, some powdered beef, beasts, and sheep, 100 quarters of grain, many barrels of salt butter, and a store of cheese.
Shortly after this event Tickhill was 'sleighted', or made untenable by the Parliament; and so ended it's history as a fortress. Of the castle itself there is now nothing to be seen, so completely has it been incorporated into a modern house after the type, as I said before, of a banker's villa.
Tickhill Church
Concerning the tradition of Tickhill's once possessing 7 churches. Tradition further says that the material used in the erection of St. Mary's Church was derived from the original parish church of All Hallows, and from another ruined fabric, the stone being mostly from Roche Abbey quarries.
This noble edifice dated from the time of Richard II. At the east end is the altar-tomb of a Tickhill merchant, one William de Eastfield, who is believed to have been most nearly concerned in erecting St. Mary's, if not the actual founder. He was seneschal of the Honor of Tickhill, and died in 1386.
Everything points to the opulence of the town at this period, when it was a centre of trade between the West Riding and Bawtry, then a port on a navigable river. Hither came strings of pack-horses carrying wool from the West Riding and lead from Derbyshire. These merchants felt they could afford to build as handsome a church as any of their neighbours, and they put Bawtry to shame by building one of the finest in Yorkshire, incorporating into it whatever consecrated stone they could get permission to remove from the meanly built church of All Hallows. On one of the shields sculptured outside the tower is the merchant's device of William White, who left Tickhill for London, and became Lord Mayor in 1489.
There can be no finer specimen of the Perpendicular style of architecture than the nave of this church. On each side of it are 8 fine clerestory windows, remarkably large and close together for their height above the ground; and the choir roof seems singularly low when contrasted against the height of nave and tower. Someone confided to me that he had overheard the antiquaries say that the remarkable window over the chancel arch was the only one of its kind in the North. Joseph Kirkland the parish clerk - said that the church had been very considerably renovated in 1895 at a cost of £1,500. the mortuary chapel of the Laughtons being then thoroughly overhauled and fitted up as a mourning chapel.
Mr. J. Badger, of 144, Hanover Street, Sheffield, informs me that he erected the fine lych-gate. In the north-west corner of the nave is a goodly array of quaint monuments, including an old altar-tomb, and a shockingly mutilated tail tomb, on which are stretched effigies of young William Fitzwilliam, bareheaded and in surcoat, who died in 1478, and Elizabeth Clarell, in a formal square head-dress, who survived him for 53 years. Lord Macaulay and other historians have shown up the real character of many of these recumbent knights, whose tombs are embellished with eulogistic inscriptions. A shattered effigy suggests a scene in which the bones of a dead man are being savagely broken by village serfs who are intolerant of corruptness and hypocrity in their vaunted superiors. It would be unfitting that they should be represented by the sculptor as alive in an upright attitude, conceiving fresh machinations of self glory. This once gorgeously painted tomb of the Fitzwilliamses is proclaimed by its arabesques to belong to the time of Henry VIII when English sculpture and architecture were beginning to be influenced by Italian models. William and Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, against whose name no word of reproach is uttered, lie buried on the site of the Austin Friary, their tomb having been transferred to the church on the Dissolution of that house. Hard by there are 2 stone coffins, one of them very large, the lid sculptured with a remarkably fine cross fleury in bold relief, probably of the 13th century. An old chest, banded with iron, lies against the west wall, very far gone in its decay. There is a black and white mural monument to Sarah Monk, daughter of the Rev. Joshua Waddington, Vicar of Harworth and mother of Dr. Monk, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. She died April 25th, 1848, at the age of 101.
Tickhill has its so-called curfew-bell, rung at 6 o'clock in the evening, also at 6 o'clock in the morning, though only the sanctus-bell, or choir-bell, is used at this time. For Pancake Bell on Shrove Tuesday at 11 a.m., the conveyancer is the Preparation Day-bell, used on the days preceding Good Friday, Ash Wednesday, Ascension Day, Christmas Day, etc. Mr. Percy, the Tickhill tailor, told me that it was his practice to cut into his annual pancakes directly the bell sounded, that he made his dinner entirely from pancakes on that day, and, into the bargain, secured the meal a full hour earlier than on other days.
Spital Hill
From Spital Hill the white tower of Tickhill is seen from 1 mile away. This hamlet is situated not at the top, but at the bottom of the hill. Overlooking Tickhill plain, amid delightful young plantations, is a picturesque black and white house, in the post and pan style, the patterned front of its upper story resting on red brick. O! the delights of living here, if only for one brief year!
The hamlet itself is well situated under a wooded bank, ornamented by a windmill. It looks like a place suitable for a hermit's cell; and it is pretty certain that in times medieval there has been here a hospital or a hospice for travellers, which would be an ever open sanctuary from the wild beasts of the forest.
Spittle or Spital, is a somewhat common name in Yorkshire, and I believe a stream of water invariably passes through the locality. It occurs at Flixton and Staxton, near the Wolds; at Barton Hill, between York and Malton; at Fangfoss, near Pocklington; and again within half a mile of Helmsley.
Every Spital is a home of rural quietude, with a red grange or two and a copse, where throstles sing from sunrise to sundown. The cross-roads at Tickhill Spital lead northerly to Rossington and Doncaster, and southerly to Harworth and Blythe town, in North Nottinghamshire.
On the white sign-post, the arms of which have iron supports, I found a throstle perched, and a goldfinch was picking among the gorse which nestled around a walled tree on the triangular sward between the cross-roads.
Harworth village, three quaters of a mile from here, had for its vicar the Rev. Mr. Huntsman. Harworth is a bad village to find at any time, and those who pronounce the name as it is spelt stand but a meagre chance of ever arriving there! unless they know the roads. The pronunciation is "Arrath," while Haworth is "Owoth," Hurworth "Urwuth," and Heworth "Yewith." Occasionally Mr. Huntsman's letters went to all these places before they found him.
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