Out of Elksley and northbound on the A1 take the first on the right for Ordsall and in half a mile we regain the Old North Road. At the crossroads is the Jockey House and opposite it, a large squarish milestone with inscriptions. The front reads, I think, though it’s not very clear:
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Coach Road to Worksop Mannor House 7 Miles 3qtrs 176.. and on the west side, rather precisely: from London 143 Miles and a half but it is the east side that is really interesting: The Keys at the Jockey House
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Click on image for bigger view of the Jockey Stone. |
Presumably there was a tollgate here and the keys were kept in the nearby house. The message is like those found these days in church porches but the medium is different. No paper note here. The author regarded his note permanent enough to be cast in stone. Does it tell of the stability of the 18th Century? If so, it was a misplaced view. Soon after, in 1766, a Turnpike Act diverted The Great North Road through Retford and the Jockey House toll abandoned on this Old North Road. But that leaves a puzzle. Why was there a toll here at all? This road was never subject to a Turnpike Act.
The house is now occupied by Charles Neal who makes wooden signs.
He has kindly contributed the rest of the text on this page and the following drawing which he describes as "An early eighteenth century sketch of Jockey House", though it seems very like Harper's sketch from his 1901 book.
Standing as it has done for centuries Jockey House is now most attractively restored as a house and adjacent cottage that retain its former identity as a coaching inn. At its side the Old North Road peters out in a grass track halting at the airfield fence. Surprisingly, Jockey House is not listed yet it must have some claim to be among the oldest of the county’s buildings.
A previous owner, who made extensive renovations, left notes of what was found for the benefit of the occupants. He mentions daub and wattle walls dating from the fourteenth century, arched brick windows indicating sixteenth century work as well as headers and stretchers in the brickwork, wire cut bricks and pegged 'teams. Other signs of early building methods were found upstairs where floors, constructed of lime and pebble, were laid over bulrushes. In the living room the original fireplace remains: through its wide chimney the sky is amply visible. So are ledges, as deep as steps. One ledge in particular is much deeper than the others. The significance of this became clear in the nineteen sixties when the roof was replaced. Slung underneath it was a large box-like construction, a priest hole, which at a later date served Dick Turpin when the law was after him.
A long oral tradition links Dick Turpin with houses along the Old North Road but with Jockey House in particular. As late as Edwardian times wagonettes brought tourists down this lane to see where the infamous highwayman hid. In summer this is a tranquil spot with crops and water sprinklers stretching towards Rufford Abbey and Clumber Park. Ancient Sherwood is on the horizon. An occasional green bus rattles past the door to cross the A1 making for Mansfield or Nottingham. In past centuries Jockey House seems to have been a daunting place with a gibbet on the crossroads outside the door. An extant eighteenth century sketch shows what a lonely place it was. As if to emphasise its remoteness the Jockey Stone, which still stands, records that it is 1421/2 miles from London.
As an inn it had an astonishing past featuring guests as desperate and even more mysterious than Dick Turpin.
One was a young girl who stayed at Jockey Inn more than three hundred years ago. Her sad story has been handed down by people who were sufficiently concerned about the injustice done to her to pass the story on.
Eventually the brief account of her murder was written in block capitals on a page torn from an exercise book in the early years of this century and passed on to the owners with the deeds. The story refers to the murder of Lady Caroline 'in the sixteen hundreds,' predating another murder in 1721 which attracted national publicity. In the intervening years improved communications - especially the spread of newspapers - had ensured that news travelled both farther and faster.
Lady Caroline's story is intriguingly brief. Travelling by coach she arrived late at night and took a room at Jockey Inn. The next morning she was missing. The account tells that the innkeeper was in a bad mood because he suspected that she had left early to avoid paying her bill. Much later in the day he went to the cellar to draw beer and noticed something dumped behind the barrels.
It was the body of Lady Caroline. The crime appears to have gone undetected.
What is now Jockey House was the actual inn, the present cottage the living quarters of the innkeeper. There were no more than three rooms for guests so even if those were occupied on the night of the murder there were few suspects.
An amazing aspect of the crime is that Lady Caroline's body was found in the cellar under the living quarters of the innkeeper. That was a long way to carry a body through the archway that still separates the two dwellings and past the well which was the only source of water and must have been in fairly frequent use.
Jockey House has kept its secret: the mystery will never be solved. In its refurbished state with smooth lawns, neat hedges, fresh paint and flower-filled tubs, Jockey House looks the unlikeliest scene of such a crime.
Yet not only Lady Caroline met a violent death there but John Baragh's life was also cut short.
On 24th_June 1721 a company of guards travelling south down the Old North Road stopped at the Jockey Inn for refreshment. John Baragh had been there before the guards came in.
The Captain, Midford Hendry, was a sociable man who liked company and talking. He knew his own mind and spoke it; he had no time for anyone who disagreed with him. When the Captain began discussing politics John Baragh disagreed with him. To emphasise the truth of his argument Captain Midford Hendry drew his sword. Possibly he intended only to put a country bumpkin in his place. If he had been sober he would perhaps have had greater control over his actions.
The fact is he ran John Baragh through in a most professional way and the civilian died immediately. Four days later he was buried, in Elkesley churchyard where the leaning, crumbling gravestone reads, 'murdered 24.6.1721 aged 29 years. There is an interesting footnote to this story, involving a strange coincidence.
Unlike the murder of Lady Caroline which appears not to be recorded but has survived through an oral tradition, the Baragh murder in 1721 was reported in a London newspaper.
A painter and decorator told the Retford Times on 10th October 1902 - a hundred and eighty years after the murder- that was when he was an apprentice forty years before, he was helping to renew mirror and picture frames at Elkesley vicarage. These are his words referring to that occasion in about 1860:
We ran out of paint and sent up by mail to London for a supply of gold for colouring. The firm in London sent the colouring back wrapped in an old newspaper. This newspaper, a London one, contained an account of the inquest on John Baragh who was murdered at Jockey House by Captain Midford Hendry.'
So, by a coincidence, a hundred and forty years after the murder, a man in the vicarage attached to the churchyard where the victim is buried reads his story. Forty years after reading it he passes it on to a local newspaper and almost a century later it is recorded on microfilm in the local history library.
There is something about the name of this prepossessing house that is slightly disturbing. It carries some connotation that accords more with its history than with its present appearance. For, from medieval times 'to jockey' meant to deceive, to cheat.
There is the mysterious and somewhat sinister incident of the title, Jockey of Norfolk, being used of Sir John Howard, the first of that name to become Duke of Norfolk. He was a loyal supporter of king Richard III, fighting with him at the Battle of Bosworth where both he and the King were killed. The night before the battle Sir John returned to his tent to find this strange warning:
Jockey of Norfolk be not too bold
For Dickon, thy Master, is bought and sold.
Retrospectively that smacks more of dirty tricks than prophecy. Jockey seems to have been a Northern diminutive for John. So jockey of Norfolk was simply about as disrespectful an address as the writer of the note could use and still clearly identify the Duke.
©Biff Vernon 2001, 2003
