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This coming September will be very exciting for heritage lovers in Nottinghamshire with the return of Heritage Open Days’ annual community festival!

The festival, which has been running for over 25 years in the UK, provides individuals with the chance to get involved in heritage through exclusive local events. This festival contributes to the European Heritage Days in which 50 signatory states celebrate diversity, culture, and heritage every September.

Heritage Open Days aims to celebrate heritage and community by organising talks, workshops, and tours of historical sites. All the events in this festival are free. This includes rare visits to selected sites that normally ask for an entry fee. For example, usually closed on Sundays, the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum will be opening its doors to the public, for free, on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September. Other sites included in this festival are Trent Bridge cricket ground, Newstead Abbey, Bromley House Library, and the Workhouse and Infirmary. Visit the Heritage Open Days website for the full list.

Running from Friday 6th September until Sunday 15th September, there are over 70 exciting events happening in the Nottinghamshire area.

Above: 22 & 24 Kirkgate, Newark. To learn more about timber buildings in Newark, there will be a guided tour of Newark's timber framed heritage on Sunday 8th and Sunday 15th September. Visit the event information here.

Here are some of the events we’re excited about:

• Join the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections team for a captivating journey through time. In a talk titled 'On the Road: Nottinghamshire's Early Tourists in Europe and Beyond', you will follow in the footsteps of early travellers from Nottinghamshire who ventured abroad on the 18th and 19th centuries. The talk takes place on Friday 6th September, booking is required. Book your place here.
• Nottingham Trent University will be offering an opportunity to visit the original Bramley apple tree in Southwell, Nottinghamshire on Saturday 7th September. No booking required. For more event information, visit the event page here.
• Join a guided tour covering the rich history of a beautiful community-owned wildlife site of Spa Ponds Nature Reserve that sits on the edge of the historic Clipstone Deer Park near Mansfield. ‘The site's story connects with Sherwood Forest, King's Clipstone, and King John's Palace’. The tour will take plan on Saturday 14th September, booking is required. Book your place here.
• A demonstration on how to maintain and repair historic buildings will be hosted in Newark by Nottinghamshire Buildings Preservation Trust and Newark Civic Trust. ‘There will be demonstrations of the skills and techniques required and the chance to get hands on with some of the skills. There will be stalls around the demonstration area related to the experts and the groups involved’. This event is due to take place on Saturday 14th September, no booking required. For more information, visit the event page here.
• ‘Celebrate nature and heritage at Mill Waters, Sutton in Ashfield, with free traditional crafts demos and activities, nature-based crafts for kids, story trail, heritage display, traditional games, abseil of England's oldest railway viaduct, live music and more’. This event takes place on Saturday 14th September, no booking required. For more event information, visit the event page here.

To find out about all the events being offered in Nottinghamshire, including dates and booking information, please visit Heritage Open Days.

Please be aware that free entry to some sites is only on specific set days and some events may require booking.

This inspiring article comes from our Winter 2009/2010 Newsletter:

The Bramley Apple story begins around 1809 with Mary Ann Brailsford, a young Southwellian who took some pips from the apples her mother was preparing and planted them in a flowerpot. As one of the pips was doing so well, it was later transferred to the young girl’s garden where it began to thrive. It is this tree that first began to bare a unique apple, one that has become the most respected apples in the world. Sadly, however, Mary left the family house and her apple seedling, and later died, without knowing how influential her seedling would become in the future.

Above: Bramley Apples (By Marcin Floryan - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.5)

The apple that has become one of Southwell’s most celebrated assets may have gone unnoticed if it had not been for a certain young Henry Merryweather who was born in Carlton-on-Trent in 1839. His father, also called Henry, had been in the employment of Reverend John Drake Becher as a gardener in Carlton-on-Trent until 1840, when the Reverend moved to take up residence at Norwood Hall in Southwell, taking his gardener with him to look after the extensive gardens which supplied the needs of the house.

Henry Jnr joined his father working in the gardens of Norwood Hall at the tender age of 10, allowing him to gain a first-class knowledge of horticulture and develop a particular interest in the may different fruits which were grown in the grounds and walled kitchen garden.

In 1854, father and son ceased working at Norwood Hall so that they could begin their own business as nurserymen. They invested in buying two acres of land (adjacent to Norwood Park) which was just sufficient for the Merryweathers to concentrate on cultivating and selling fruit, strawberries in particular.

It was purely by chance that one day, young Henry Jnr noticed some fine-looking apples that the gardener of the Vicar Choral of Southwell Minister was carrying in a basket. Upon asking the gardener where he had got the apples from, the gardener replied that they were off the tree that grew in Mr Bramley’s garden at No. 73, Easthorpe. Henry immediately went round to see Mr Bramley to ask if he could take some grafts from the apple tree, so that he might propagate it for he believed he had found a unique apple.

Mr Bramley was happy to oblige and said that Henry could take as many grafts as he wished, as long as he named the apple that they produced after him. Henry was extremely successful in cultivating the grafts and was soon producing an award-winning apple.

Above: 'Painted by John Ralph Starkey at Norwood in 1910', some Bramley seedlings planted by Mr Starkey at Norwood Hall park at the start of the 20th century (By PresstheStarKey - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0). You can find out more about the Starkey saplings at Norwood Park and even possibly buy a Bramley sapling clone here.

Henry Merryweather first presented the ‘Bramley Seedling’ to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Fruit Committee on the 6th December 1876 where it was highly commended. On presenting the variety again in 1877, the apple received a First-Class Certificate by the Committee of the Royal Jubilee Exhibition of Apples in Manchester.

Since those early years, the Bramley Apple has received several first-class certificates and is now recognised as one of Britain’s best loved varieties. Many celebrations of the apple are hosted in Southwell to this day including the Bramley Apple Food and Drink Festival hosted by Southwell Minster in October.

Did you know it was only 30 years ago that the last pit pony finished working in British mines? Their service was over in Nottinghamshire’s pits by the 1970s, but prior to mechanical removal of coal, pit ponies were used in large numbers. By 1913, 70,000 pit ponies and colliery horses were at work in Britain’s mines. This book traces the lives of the pit ponies from the collieries around Sherwood Forest through exploration of their underground stables. Miner2Major, a landscape partnership scheme aimed, with support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to explore and celebrate the built heritage of the Sherwood Forest area including these fascinating stables.

This new publication examines the colliery stables around Sherwood Forest through the twentieth century. Based on archival research, photographic evidence and oral histories, this book examines the stables built to accommodate the huge equine workforce that were hidden underground.

Loan copies are available in all Nottinghamshire libraries. Printed copies will be available free of charge from larger Nottinghamshire libraries while stocks last (at Hucknall, Mansfield, Mansfield Woodhouse, Ollerton, Southwell, West Bridgford and Worksop). Also available at Five Leaves bookshop in Nottingham and ‘The Bookcase’ in Lowdham, Bilsthorpe and Kirkby Heritage Centres. It is also available to download as an e-book here.

Colliery Village Records on the Historic Environment Record (HER):

Annesley

Bestwood

Bilsthorpe

Blidworth

Clipstone

Edwinstowe

Newstead

Ollerton

Welbeck

www.miner2major.org.uk

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Scattered across the country are the traces of small medieval communities that disappeared from the countryside centuries ago. A deserted medieval village (DMV) refers to a settlement that was established during the medieval period in Europe, approximately between the 5th to 15th centuries AD, which has since been abandoned and left unoccupied. These were small, self-sufficient, agricultural communities, paying taxes to the feudal lords. Many of these sites are now protected as scheduled monuments.

In Nottinghamshire, LiDAR technology, aerial photography, historic records, and field survey, have so far revealed traces of 55 villages lost to time. Click here to discover their names and locations.

Have you ever seen a church in the middle of nowhere and wondered why it was built there? One local example is the ruined church of St James at Haughton. Check out the Church of St James record here.

Above: Ruins of the Church of St James, Haughton.

These ruins are all that remain of the church and the only indication of the medieval village that was once here. First named as Hocton in the Domesday book, it was renamed Haughton in 1316. The early Norman church was restored in the C14th and served as the parish church. Check out the deserted village of Haughton record here.

During the Tudor period, common land that belonged to the people was claimed by noblemen and enclosed, with the villagers evicted. This was the fate of the medieval village at Houghton. In 1509, William Holles enclosed a park of 240 acres. He evicted the villagers, built Houghton Hall, and annexed the church as a domestic chapel. In 1691, Houghton Hall passed into the Holles family, but they preferred to live at Welbeck Abbey and left Houghton Hall and the church to fall into ruin. By 1790, records reveal that both buildings were ‘in total decay’. The Hall was demolished in 1770 and the upper parts of the chapel were reduced in the 1960s to the ruins visible today. 

The site is visible in the LiDAR Survey of 2021. The outline of the church is clearly visible, but apart from a few sections of stone walling, there is little trace of the medieval village to be found today, in the surrounding arable landscape.

Above: LiDAR image of the deserted church at Haughton.

LiDAR images are a good source for identifying deserted medieval villages. Earthworks (trackways, ponds, ditches, boundaries, tofts and crofts and rigg and furrow) are often the only surviving signs of occupation, and they are easier to identify in LiDAR images than through field survey.

Enclosure was a common cause of the desertion of medieval villages. In some cases, it was necessary due to changing cultivation practices at a time when sheep farming was more profitable than agriculture. This is known to be the reason for the desertion of Thorpe in the Glebe. Other reasons for population decline and desertion include famine, disease and conflict. Urbanisation was also attracting some people to migrate to towns and cities. Check out the Thorpe in the Glebe deserted Medieval village record here.

Some impacted villages did survive. Today, the village of Little Carlton near Newark, is a linear settlement, with houses built along Bathley Lane. In medieval times, the populated area was further west, close to the manor house. Today this area is farmland, but the marking of medieval trackways, sunken pathways, boundaries, house platforms, tofts, and a pond are still visible. Little Carlton is an example of a village that has either shrunk over time or shifted its central point. Check out the shrunken village of Little Carlton record here.

Above: The area marked in green shows the scheduled site of the shrunken village of Little Carlton.

Through the combination of modern technology and historical texts, the long-gone villages of medieval Nottinghamshire are re-emerging. Pioneering archaeological techniques might yet tell us more about their demise. At a site featured on Digging for Britain, Tephra particles were identified in soil samples taken from the deserted medieval village of East Hestlerton, in Yorkshire. This is the first direct evidence that volcanic activity in Iceland, may have caused crop failures in England in the sixth century, and perhaps resulted in the demise of some medieval villages. Could this be the case in Nottinghamshire too?

With Christmas approaching and the cost-of-living crisis continuing to bite, charities are appealing for donations to help those in need this Christmas and beyond. Thankfully, attitudes towards those in need have come a long way since Dickens introduced us to Ebenezer Scrooge.

Built in 1824, the Workhouse at Southwell stands as an exceptionally well-preserved window into Victorian attitudes towards the poor.

Above: The Workhouse, Southwell. By DeFacto - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia.

The English Poor Law of 1834 led to the establishment of around 1800 workhouses throughout England and Wales. Built to eliminate pauperism, they effectively became prisons for the most vulnerable in society. Victorian attitudes were harsh: unsympathetic, and morally judgmental. Conditions in the workhouses were intentionally austere and unpleasant to deter all but the truly destitute. Upon entry, families were split up into male and female wings, and children separated from their parents. They lived and worked segregated lives, with no contact. Workhouse inmates slept in communal dormitories on narrow beds, with very basic bedding. They wore institutional uniforms and were put to work on gruelling physical tasks like breaking rocks, picking oakum fibres from old ropes, laundry work or corn grinding. The food provided was of very poor nutritional quality and meagre portions.

Whilst life for the 160 inmates at Southwell was undoubtedly bleak and unpleasant, there is evidence that gradual improvements were made as attitudes changed and new poor laws were passed. One major advance was the distinction made between the non-disabled ‘undeserving’ poor (the idle) and the infirm and elderly ‘deserving’ (blameless) poor, who were to be housed in an infirmary and cared for by nurses. The number of school places was expanded, and inmates began to work in the community with a view to a future beyond the walls. Decorative elements such as flower beds were introduced to create a more humane environment.

In 1929, new legislation transferred control of the workhouses to local authorities, who were required to run them as hospitals for the elderly and infirm who were unable to leave. The name was changed to Greet House, and people with social needs continued to be provided for here, until the late 1970s.

The site was purchased by the National Trust in 1997, and after years of restoration, was opened to the public in 2002. Today, the building is brought to life through the stories and objects of those who once lived here. The workhouse building has been designated as a Grade II* listed building as the most complete example of a workhouse in Britain and for its historical and social significance, representing the poor, who are largely missing from history, and the impact of poverty across the generations.

Check out the HER record here