A1-The Great North Road
| Littleborough is a little borough in Nottinghamshire on side of the Trent. In fact it is so little there are only five houses and a little Norman church. With a 24 foot nave, it is the littlest church in Nottinghamshire, built in 1033 on the site of a Saxon Church. Littleborough was not always quite so little; in 1851 the population was 84 so several houses have disappeared. |
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The Trent Bridge at Gainsborough was built in 1789, but the ferry at Littleborough continued to thrive and the road from Bawtry to the ferry was turnpiked in 1825 at the same time of the local enclosure Act.
This was the site of a Roman ford, taking an ancient Great North Road from Ermine Street, north of Lincoln, across the Trent to avoid the much more hazardous Humber crossing between Winteringham and Brough.
Trollope described the Roman Trent crossing thus: From Marton the road descends into the valley below, pointing directly to Littleborough, on the Nottinghamshire bank of the Trent. Here was a ford made by the Romans in the manner they usually adopted as an aid to transit of rivers. On either side the bank was sloped away, so as to make an easy descent leading to a raised causeway in the bed of the river. This was eighteen feet wide, and held up by strong stakes driven into the soil on either side, and paved with stones. It existed until 1820, when through the obstruction it created in the navigation of the river during dry seasons, it was removed, but a portion of the paved descent on the Nottinghamshire side still remains.
While Codrington says: A causeway leads to the Trent, which was crossed by a paved ford. Gale saw it entire in the middle of the eighteenth century, a causeway 18 feet wide held up by piles. It was removed as a hindrance to navigation in 1820, and a man who was engaged in the work said that the ford was paved with rough, square stones, and on each side were oak piles 10 or 12 feet long, with timber cills across from one to the other.
And White's Directory of Nottinghamshire 1853 gives us: The parish has generally a rich soil, and was enclosed in 1825, when the act was obtained for making a new turnpike from Retford to Littleborough ferry, which crosses the River Trent close to the village, near the site of a Roman Ford, which consisted of a stone pavement, protected by piles of oak, but the latter were removed some years ago by the Trent Navigation Company, so that the stones were nearly all displaced.
Standing on the river bank now, particularly in winter with the fresh water backed up by a high tide in the Humber, one is definitely not tempted to try fording; the river looks swift and deep. But the navigation charts do warn of shallows when the river is low and in 1933 drought lowered the river enough to reveal the remains of the paved road. A line of substantial stone blocks, perhaps Roman or perhaps related to later ferry operation, thirty yards from the water's western edge may mark a former bank when the river was much wider and consequently shallower.
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The Trent by the Roman ford at Littleborough |
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View up the modern bank. The stone blocks in the grass, centre right, may mark an earlier water's edge. |
Littleborough was probably the Segeloci of the Antonine Itinerary (Iter. V.), with a fort across the water at Marton and perhaps on the Littleborough side too. More Roman stuff here.
The Roman ford left Littleborough with a lasting importance. In about 628 St. Paulinus, archbishop of York, was busy baptizing newly converted Christians in the Trent here. He had previously baptized Edwin, king of Northumbria, whose reign had spread from southern Scotland to Lincolnshire. Shortly after, in 633, Edwin was killed, further downstream, at the Battle of Hatfield Chase. Four centuries after, in 1066, Harold crossed the ford, twice, on a trip to Stamford Bridge and back. He was also killed but after travelling down the Great North Road.
| The 1825 turnpike from the Littleborough ferry to Bawtry follows the Roman line but, after half a mile, does a little wobble round the toll house. |  |
From Littleborough, the Roman road proceeds north-west towards Bawtry, through the villages of Sturton-by-Steeple, South and North Wheatley, Clayworth, Everton, and Scaftworth. Near Clayworth, the road crosses the Chesterfield Canal, whose towpath is now called the Cuckoo Way, a long distance footpath for those who are tired of hills. To the south-west, across the River Idle, stand the ruins of Mattersey Priory. The Roman route is lost as we approach Bawtry but two crossing sites of the River Idle have been found, perhaps close to the site of the Battle of the Idle, fought a couple of centuries after the Romans had left.
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002, 2003
