The Recruiting Sargeant
A1-The Great North Road
Great Gonerby (pronounced Gunerby) is two miles north of Grantham on what is now the B1174 but was the A1 till the by-pass was built in 1962.
There was a Roman encampment north of the village and a Saxon settlement to the East but the village name is probably Viking. It is claimed that Oliver Cromwell stayed in a house in Pond Street planning his campaign, Grantham being the place where Cromwell first had success against the Royalists. There is a civil war battlefield on Gonerby Moor to the North of the village.
In the days of the stage coaches, before the gradient was reduced by the cutting, the ascent of Newark hill from the north was a significant obstacle to the stage coaches. The gradient was reduced a cutting were made in about 1825, allegedly by Napoleonic prisoners of war. the Great North Road ran through the village, and Gonerby hill to the south and Newark hill to the North were the steepest hills on that road south of Yorkshire. In Sir Walter Scott's "Heart of Midlothian" Jeannie Dean was famously relieved to see a hill after travelling many miles of flat land. It was said that the resulting slow stage coach traffic proved irresistible to highwaymen, the problem being so great that Great Gonerby had its own court and gallows, and in a Newark the inns warned would be travellers to remain until the next day if they could not "traverse the Gonerby hills by nightfall." Well they would wouldn't they?
Gonerby born and bred people are nicknamed "Clockpelters". Allegedly, the youths of the village used to throw stones at the church clock as some right of passage ceremony. Or maybe it was the children in the nearby schoolyard who threw snowballs at the clock in order to move the minute hand and lengthen their playtime. Presumably the neighbouring sundial was unaffected.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, regularly preached in a Chapel in Gonerby which is now the Post Office; the village became a Methodist stronghold resulting in a Gonerby group introducing Methodism to Grantham and Lincoln.
By Green Street, grass meadows known as "The Wong", were used for gathering livestock before their journey to market. The Great North Road was a drove road as well as a post road.
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The Recruiting Sargeant |
The houses in High Street are mostly built of Ancaster stone. There were three inns, the Rutland Arms, the White Swan and the Recruiting Sergeant, known locally as the "top, middle and bottom". The White Swan was demolished and the Rutland Arms is now a private house. |
The Battle of Gonerby Moor was fought out in 1643, on the low ground north of Great Gonerby, between Marston and Foston on the north-eastern side of the Great North Road.
A mile north of Great Gonerby the old route of the Great North Road, now the B1174, joins the A1 at Gonerby Roundabout. This is one of the six at grade junctions that the Highway Agency has proposed should be made ino grade separated junctions. The plan here is to build a new section of the A1 to the west of the roundabout, smoothing out the line of the road as well as providing a bridge for B1174 traffic.
Long Bennington might be better named Wide Bennington. The village is stretched along the old Great North Road but the houses are set well back to leave space for a village green though now divided up into large front gardens. With the A1 running to the west, the occasional local vehicle is lost in the wide expanse of tarmac laid long ago for serious traffic. It is a wide spacious village, with room for three pubs:
The Roayal Oak |
The Reindeer |
The Wheatsheaf |
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And here's the Reindeer
again, a long time ago. Not much change - the car went and colour
photography was invented, oh and the buildings seem to be a completely
different shape.
There used to be a place called The Manor Hotel that advertised itself as The new place of call for motorists on the Great North Road. A pleasant retreat from the noise and dust of the road. Sunny spacious bedrooms, dainty conservatory tea room. Bath. Indoor sanitation. Must have been good.
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The Long Bennington Local History Group turned its attention to the Great North Road in 1991, with a book edited by John Samuels:
It is an oddity that there is no centre to the village of Long Bennington; the shape and name can be ascribed to how it straggles along the main road - the old Great North Road. In the prehistoric period an ancient route crossed through the parish running north-south and known as Sewstern Lane and is fairly traceable from the village down to where it joins the Roman Ermine Street (now the A1 trunk road) near Greetham. It was a link between the Welland and the Trent, passing over higher dry ground. The Ordnance Survey maps show it going through the Vale of Belvoir, passing between Muston and Sedgbrook and into Long Bennington up what is now Church Lane, and Church Street and then on to Newark where it crossed the Trent. Probably used as a drover's road, and as a local route for travel and trade, it seems to have passed out of use after the middle of the 17th century.
The Great North Road is first mentioned in the 12th century and Newark and Grantham were important towns along that route. An Act of Parliament of 1725/26 and later 1735/39 established a Turnpike in this area running from Gonerby through Foston and Long Bennington and then to Newark; there were tollbooths at the Marston Crossroad (now known as the Old Tollbar House) and at Balderton. Originally the main route through the village ran either up Sewstern Lane or from Foston, up Church Lane, down Church Street and then northwestwards up what is now Main Road.
In the early 18th century Church Street was by-passed, with the Turnpike cutting straight across the fields to join up where the Foston Road joined the Turnpike the corner became known as "Turn of the Hook", the junction in the 18th and 19th centuries being broad enough to permit the turning about of coaches.
The relevance of the village as the stopping place for travellers is shown by the number of inns. There are 6 recorded as having been open in the 18th and 19th centuries; the Royal Oak, Wheatsheaf and Reindeer remain in business. The Swan (next to the Royal Oak), the Peacock (on the corner of Lilley Street and Main Road), and the White Lion (nearly opposite the present village hall) now only survive as private houses.
The Great North Road, eventually to become the A1 Trunk Road, remained the single largest feature and effect on the life of the village until the present A1 by-pass was opened in 1965 to the relief of the inhabitants!
A Bronze Age burial, a flat cremation cemetery rather than a barrow, was excavated just north of Long Bennington on a site which lay on the river terrace projecting into the alluvium and peat of Bennington Fen. Bennington Grange moated site is listed as an Ancient Monument and a mile north of Long Bennington, just to the west of the A1, at Pasture Lodge Farm, a 4th Century Romano-British settlement has been excavated and described by Leary. A little further north, at Shire Bridge Farm, a limestone phallic carving was found. Cropmarks extend either side of the road and has been interpreted as a massive ditch complex, remnants of prehistoric tribal boundaries. The Shire Bridge, hardly noticeable now from the A1, marks the boundary between Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. It follows the course of a small trickle of a stream, the Shire Dyke, a tributary of the Witham, which flows to the east.
About a mile southwest of Long Bennington is the point where the three counties of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire meet. It's just a corner of a field and small wood called Normanton Thorns. The modern OS map marks the spot with "Three Shire Oak (site of)". 19th century OS maps have a 'Three Shire Bush'. Evidently, it grew and then died. There are rumours of a standing stone, the 'Star Stone', reputed to have fallen from the sky.
Back to the village, number 54 has now become Elmtree House Gallery and Tea House. Stop for a cuppa and something tasty in the barn round the back and check out Emily’s own Eco-Chic collection of furniture and accessories including their famous POSH graffiti lettering, the delights of craftwork from Bali courtesy of Emily Readett-Bayley.
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006
