Gainsborough, Lincolnshire

Gainsborough is a market town in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The population of the town was 20,842 at the 2011 census,[1] and estimated at 23,243 in 2019.[2] It lies on the east bank of the River Trent, 18 miles (29 km) north-west of the county town of Lincoln, 15 miles (24 km) south-west of Scunthorpe, and 35 miles (56 km) east of Sheffield. At one time it had important trade downstream to Hull, as the English port furthest inland – over 55 miles (90 km) from the North Sea.

Gainsborough

Gainsborough Old Hall
Gainsborough
Location within Lincolnshire
Population22,841 (2017 estimate)
OS grid referenceSK815901
• London135 mi (217 km) S
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townGAINSBOROUGH
Postcode districtDN21
Dialling code01427
PoliceLincolnshire
FireLincolnshire
AmbulanceEast Midlands
UK Parliament

History
Gainsborough Old Hall
The Aegir (tidal bore) on the Trent
Market Place
River Trent and new Gainsborough Riverside developments

King Alfred, Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great

The place-name Gainsborough first appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 1013, as Gegnesburh and Gæignesburh. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it appears as Gainesburg: Gegn's fortified place.[3] It was one of the capital cities of Mercia in the Anglo-Saxon period that preceded Danish rule. Its choice by the Vikings as an administrative centre was influenced by its proximity to the Danish stronghold at Torksey.[4]

In 868 King Alfred married Ealhswith (Ealswitha), daughter of Æthelred Mucel, chief of the Gaini, whence the town gets its name.[5][6]

Historically, Gainsborough is the "capital that never was." Towards the end of July 1013, the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, together with his son and heir Cnut (Canute), arrived in Gainsborough with an army of conquest. Sweyn defeated the Anglo-Saxon opposition and King Ethelred fled the country. Sweyn was declared King of England, and he returned to Gainsborough. Sweyn and Cnut took up high office at the Gainsborough Castle (on the site of the present-day Old Hall), while his army occupied the camp at Thonock (today known as Castle Hills).[6] But King Sweyn died (or perhaps was killed) five weeks later in Gainsborough. His son Cnut established a base elsewhere.

Cnut may have performed his unsuccessful attempt to turn the tide back in the River Trent at Gainsborough. Historians believe he may have been demonstrating on the aegir, a tidal bore. He and his supporters may have known Gainsborough was the furthest reach of the aegir, and ideal for his demonstration. However the story was only written down a century later by Henry of Huntingdon, who gives no location, and may have been a myth or a fable.

Medieval Gainsborough

The Domesday Book (1086) records that Gainsborough was exclusively a community of farmers, villeins and sokemen, tenants of Geoffrey de Guerche. The population was only about 80, of whom about 70 per cent were of Scandinavian descent.

Gainsborough was named as capital of England and of Denmark for five weeks in the year 1013.[7]

The Lindsey Survey of 1115–1118 records that Gainsborough was held by Nigel d'Aubigny, the forebear of the Mowbray family, whose interest in Gainsborough continued until at least the end of the 14th century.

A weekly market was granted by King John in 1204.

Gainsborough Old Hall

Thomas Burgh acquired the manor of Gainsborough in 1455. He built Gainsborough Old Hall between 1460 and 1480, a large, 15th-century, timber-framed medieval strong house, and one of the best-preserved manor houses in Britain. It boasts a magnificent Great Hall and strong brick tower. King Richard III in 1483 and King Henry VIII in 1541 both stayed at the Old Hall. The manor was sold to the Hickman family in 1596.

English Civil War

The town was garrisoned for the King in January 1643 and began cooperating with the garrison at Newark in raiding the surrounding countryside and harassing Parliamentarians there. With the Great North Road blocked to Parliamentarian traffic, Gainsborough became significant as part of a route around Newark by way of Lincoln and the line of the modern A15 road. It was in Royalist interests to obstruct this, which gave rise to battles at Gainsborough and Winceby. Parliament captured Gainsborough in the battle on 20 July, but it was immediately besieged by a large Royalist army and forced to surrender after three days.

Parliament captured Gainsborough again on 18 December 1643, but had to withdraw in March 1644, razing the town's defences to prevent their use by the enemy. The Earl of Manchester's army passed through Gainsborough in May 1644 on its way to York and the Battle of Marston Moor.

After the Civil War ended in 1645, several people in Gainsborough were fined for Royalist sympathies, including Sir Willoughby Hickman, 1st Baronet at the Old Hall, who had been created the first Baronet of Gainsborough by Charles I in 1643.[8]

Churches
All Saints' Church

The first recorded evidence of a church at Gainsborough is in 1180, when the rectory there was granted by Roger de Talebu to the great Preceptory of the Knights Templar in Lindsey, at Willoughton. In 1547, following the Protestant Reformation, the parish of Gainsborough came under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln for the first time.

The medieval Church of All Saints fell into disrepair after the Civil War. In 1736 it was demolished to make way for a new parish church completed in 1748 in a mix of perpendicular Gothic and Classical Revival styles. All that remains of the medieval church is the west tower, 90 feet high with a ring of eight bells. A monument to Richard Rollett, master sailmaker on Captain James Cook's second voyage, is located in the porch.[9]

The town's rising 19th-century population called for a second church in the south of the town: Holy Trinity Church opened in 1843. This was followed by St John the Divine Church in Ashcroft Road in 1882, and St George's Church in Heapham Road in the 1950s. Holy Trinity closed in 1971 – it is now the Trinity Arts Centre) – and St John the Divine in 2002.

Non-conformism flourished in Gainsborough. It has often been claimed that some of the Mayflower Pilgrims worshipped in secret at the Old Hall before sailing for Holland to find religious freedom in 1609; no historical evidence for this has been found, whereas the congregation of John Smyth that did meet in the town developed into the Baptists and some returned to England. The John Robinson Memorial Church in Church Street was dedicated in 1897; the cornerstone was laid by Thomas F. Bayard, U.S. Ambassador.[10] Now the United Reformed Church, it was named in honour of John Robinson (1576–1625), pastor of the "Pilgrim Fathers" before they left on the Mayflower.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached in Gainsborough several times between 1759 and 1790. The town's first Methodist chapel opened in Church Lane in 1788, moving to a new site in North Street in 1804, and rebuilt there as St Stephen's in 1966. The Primitive Methodists set up in the town in 1819, with chapels in Spring Gardens (1838), Trinity Street (1877) and Ropery Road (1910). St Thomas's Church in Cross Street caters for the town's Roman Catholics.[4]

Second World War

Gainsborough suffered its only large-scale air raid of the war on the night of 10 May 1941. High explosive bombs and incendiaries were dropped but many of them fell harmlessly on the surrounding countryside. There was only minor damage in the town, and no casualties.

On the night of 28–29 April 1942 a single Dornier 217 dropped a stick of bombs on the town centre, causing extensive damage and the loss of seven lives. On 31 December 1942, a RCAF Bristol Beaufighter aircraft on a training exercise crashed on Noel Street, killing both airmen and a three-year-old girl. On 22 May 1944 a RAF Spitfire fighter, in a training exercise, collided with a Wellington bomber and crashed into a Sheffield-bound goods train as it was passing over the railway bridge on Lea Road. The pilot was the only casualty.

In the early hours of 5 March 1945 a single Junkers 88 fighter/bomber made a low level attack over the town, dropping anti-personnel bombs on Church Street and the surrounding residential area. Three people lost their lives and 50 houses were damaged.[11]

New town

There was a proposal to develop Gainsborough as a new town linked to Sheffield, but the plan was not pursued. New housing was instead built to the south east of Sheffield.[12]

Governance
The Guildhall, former offices of the West Lindsey District Council

The town was before 1974 in the Gainsborough Urban District in the county of Lindsey. West Lindsey District Council was formed from five former councils. Gainsborough Town Council was established in 1992, and in the same year Gainsborough's first mayor was appointed.

Sir Edward Leigh has been Gainsborough's MP since 1983.

Oil

In July 1958, BP discovered oil at Corringham, then at Gainsborough in January 1959. This is part of the East Midlands Oil Province.

Geography
A631 bridge over the Trent

The town is at the meeting point of the east-west A631, which crosses the Trent on Trent Bridge at the only point between the M180 and the A57), the A156 from the south to Torksey and A159 from Scunthorpe). The dual-carriageway Thorndike Way intended to link with the A15 at Caenby Corner, only reaches eastward to the town boundary. It is named after the locally-born actress Dame Sybil Thorndike. The former A631 through the town is now the B1433.

The civil parish extends south across rural land to Lea. The boundary passes to the south of Warren Wood, north of Lea Wood Farm, and along the northern edge of Lea Wood northwards through Bass Wood, where it meets Corringham, the main settlement to the east of Gainsborough. The boundary crosses Thorndike Way (A631) and briefly follows the B1433. At Belt Farm it meets Thonock, then follows The Belt Road, to the south of Gainsborough Golf Club, then down Thonock Hill to the edge of the Trent Valley.

George Eliot and The Mill on the Floss
In order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we must enter the town of St Ogg’s,—that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with through the medium of the best classic pastorals. It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town “familiar with forgotten years.” The shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen Dane, who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an invisible avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings like a white mist from his tumulus on the hill, and hovers in the court of the old hall by the river-side, the spot where he was thus miraculously slain in the days before the old hall was built. It was the Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is, like the town, telling of the thoughts and hands of widely sundered generations; but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic façade and towers of finest small brickwork with the trefoil ornament, and the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not sacreligiously pull down the ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed banqueting-hall.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book Sixth, Chapter XII.

Many scholars believe Gainsborough to be the basis for the fictional town of St Ogg's in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860). The novelist visited Gainsborough in 1859, staying in the house of a shipbuilder on Bridge Street (which survives today as the United Services Club). The stone bridge and the nearby willow tree are mentioned, and the Old Hall is described in detail. Thomas Miller's Our Old Town published two years before, included the true story of a miller who loses a lawsuit after assaulting his adversary, and George Eliot used a similar story plot in The Mill on the Floss as the basis of the Tulliver/Wakem feud. It's also possible that she witnessed the Trent Aegir, which inspired the flood in her story's climax.[4]

Economy

Boiler-maker and ironworks

Gainsborough has a long-standing history of industry. It was the manufacturing base of Marshall, Sons & Co., a boiler-maker founded by William Marshall in 1848, who died in 1861 and was buried in the cemetery in Ropery Road. His business became one of the new joint-stock companies run by his sons James and Henry. It occupied the 16-acre Britannia Ironworks, the biggest in Europe when built. Marshall's Works steam engines were sold all over the world until it closed in the 1980s.[4] The site has now been split among many different companies, Tesco on Beaumont Street and Dransfield's remodelling about nine acres. The remainder is occupied by local companies.

Supermarkets
Entrance to Marshall's Yard, 2008

Tesco, on the corner of Trinity Street and Colville Terrace, demolished much of the works to create its store some twenty years ago. It had intended to replace their current store with a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) Tesco Extra store on stilts, with parking beneath, but these plans were scrapped. Dransfield remodelled about nine acres (36,000 m²) of the site to include a shopping area and a new heritage museum. The site Marshall's Yard opened during Easter 2007, with additional shops opening after that.

A Morrisons is located on Heapham Road South. A Co-op is located in the Lindsey Centre, at Morton by Gainsborough and on the old site of the Jack and Jill Pub by St Georges Community Hall.

Packaging

Another area of Gainsborough's industry is Rose Brothers,[13] after William German Rose and Walter Rose, the co-founders. In 1893 William Rose invented the world's first packaging machine, and two years later bought the Trentside Works site and started to expand his packaging machine business. Rose's diversified into many other areas, and for many years they were associated with household brands that produced the demand items of the day, including starch, razor blades and sweets, including Cadbury's chocolates, after which the Roses selection is named. They produced seaside rock-making machines, cigarette-making machines and bread-slicing and wrapping machines. When the company closed, A. M. P Rose bought the confectionery packaging side of the business.[4]

Wigs, jokes and exhausts

By the side of the east bank of the Trent near the railway bridge is a large mill owned by Kerry Ingredients (headquartered in Tralee).

Gainsborough is the home of two of the largest jokes and novelties importers in the UK: Smiffy's (formerly known as RH Smith & Sons, founded in 1894),[14] and Pam's of Gainsborough, a smaller company founded in 1986. Smiffy's were the only wigmaker left in the UK until December 2008, when bulk production was outsourced to the Far East and over 35 staff were made redundant. The company has set its future goals on a more mature fancy dress and party market.

Another local business is the firm of Eminox, founded in 1978. They started by building replacement exhausts for the local bus company. They have expanded into a manufacturing company that specialises in the large stainless steel exhaust systems fitted to buses and commercial vehicles. They are also building low-emission catalytic systems for the London low emission zone.

Landmarks

Beside Riverside Walk are Whitton's Mill flats, which won a Royal Town Planning Institute award for the East Midlands. Marshall's Yard also received an award, for regeneration.[15]

West Lindsey District Council had its main offices at the Guildhall on Lord Street, but moved in January 2008 to a new £4.3 million building in Marshall's Yard.[16]

View of the Water Tower on Heapham Road
A631 bypass - Thorndike Way looking west

Silver Street is home to many Gainsborough shops. Elswitha Hall is the birthplace of Halford John Mackinder, founder of the Geographical Association.

A large water tower stands on Heapham Road, built in 1897 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.[17]

Transport

Railway
Further information: Gainsborough Lea Road railway station and Gainsborough Central railway station

The town has two railway stations, serving different routes.

The main station is Gainsborough Lea Road on Lea Road (A156) to the south of the town, serving the Sheffield-Lincoln and Doncaster-Lincoln lines with mainly hourly services to Lincoln, Sheffield and Doncaster. Sheffield services generally call at Retford, Worksop and Sheffield only, and then continue towards Leeds.

The second station is Gainsborough Central in Spring Gardens near the town centre. It serves the Brigg branch line and is the terminus of an hourly service to and from Sheffield on Mondays to Saturdays, calling at all stations. On Saturdays there are also three services to Cleethorpes via Brigg and Grimsby Town.

Where the railway crosses the Trent, the four lines come together at two junctions on either side of the river. The lines from Lincoln and Cleethorpes meet at East Trent Junction, east of the river. Those from Sheffield and Doncaster meet at West Trent Junction on the opposite side of the river in Nottinghamshire.

West Burton Power Station is three miles (5 km) to the south-west of the town, next to the Sheffield-Lincoln Line.

Buses

The town's bus station is in Hickmen Street. There are frequent town bus services on Monday to Saturday, but no Sunday services. Most town routes are served by Stagecoach. Two local services connect the uphill area of the town and Morton to the town centre, one running clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. The town has a connection hub with hourly services to Lincoln, Scunthorpe and Retford and a service to Doncaster every two hours. These serve several villages along the route. Other school bus services run during term times.

Rivers
River Trent in Gainsborough, 2009

Gainsborough is claimed to be the British port furthest inland.[18][19] It has had a long history of river shipping trade.

There is still one wharf, but ships no longer navigate this far up river. Commercial shipping remains further down the river at Gunness Wharf, Grove Wharf and Flixborough Wharf, which has direct rail links. This leads to some to argue that Goole, (23.7 miles (38.1 km) to the north of the town, is now the most inland port in the UK.[20][21]

At the A631 Trent Bridge, there was previously a ferry across the Trent before 1787, a distance of 235 feet. The bridge was completed for £12,000 in the spring of 1791, but it meant that taller river traffic of the day could no longer go further upstream. Originally a toll bridge, it was bought by the Ministry of Transport, Lindsey County Council, Gainsborough Urban District and Nottinghamshire County Council for £130,000 in 1927 and declared toll-free on 31 March 1932.[4]

Sport

The town is home to the semi-professional football club Gainsborough Trinity F.C., which plays in the Northern Premier League, the seventh level of English football. For a brief spell at the start of the 20th century, the club was professional and a member of the Football League.

Gainsborough Rugby Club (the All Blacks) have played Rugby Union in the town since 1924.

There are several cycling clubs, including Trent Valley Road Club, Viking Velo and Gainsborough Aegir Cycling Club.

Attractions

The house and grounds of Richmond Park, in the north of the town, were opened as a public park in 1947. Attractions include greenhouses, an aviary and a 600-year-old oak tree. Whitton Gardens, on the Riverside, opened in 1973.

The Town Hall, located in a 1908 town hall building, is a restaurant and entertainment venue. After closure in 2012 and a change of ownership, it reopened in 2016. It seats up to 200.[22]

Renovation of the town's river banks was completed in 2002, providing residents and tourists with access to the riverside. On the second weekend in June in that year, the town hosted the Gainsborough Riverside Festival, an annual arts/heritage event that ran until 2013, when it suffered financial constraints.

Education

Unlike most of the UK, Lincolnshire still retains the Tripartite System, with secondary education for many pupils decided by voluntary examination at eleven. The town has one of the top state schools in the country, Queen Elizabeth's High School (selective state grammar school from 11-18 featuring a sixth form) on Morton Terrace (A159).[23]

QEHS students consistently earn outstanding GCSE & A-Level results, and the school is over-subscribed.[24][25] Alternative secondary education is provided by The Gainsborough Academy, a new school which opened in a £25 million new building on Corringham Road in September 2009 as Trent Valley Academy and changed its name in July 2014. From 2010, both secondaries in collaboration with Lincoln College and the Aegir School, a new local Special School, are delivering the new Diplomas at Level 2 and Level 3 through the 14-19 Gainsborough Partnership, an organisation offering educational opportunities in the Gainsborough area.

There are several primary schools in the town.

The town has links with the John Leggott Sixth Form College in Scunthorpe, North Lindsey College, and Lincoln College which has a branch at Gainsborough College on Acland Street, focusing on vocational education.

Sweyn Forkbeard, king of Denmark and England, who died in Gainsborough in 1014

Notable people

In birth order:

International relations

Gainsborough is twinned with:

References
  1. UK Census (2011). "Local Area Report – Gainsborough Built-up area (E34004397)". Nomis. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  2. City Population. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  3. Eilert Ekwall,The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, p. 191.
  4. Ian S. Beckwith, The Book of Gainsborough (1988)ISBN 0860232697
  5. Walker, Ian W (2000). Mercia and the Making of England Sutton ISBN 0-7509-2131-5
  6. Cox, J. Charles (1916); Lincolnshire p. 133; Methuen & Co. Ltd.; retrieved 23 April 2011
  7. BBC article. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  8. West, John. Oliver Cromwell and the Battle of Gainsborough (1992) ISBN 0-902662-43-0
  9. Monument to Richard Rollett at All Saints' Church, Gainsborough.
  10. "New York Times 30 May 1897" (PDF).
  11. Gainsborough Heritage Society Gainsborough at War 1939-1945.
  12. Clyde Binfield, The History of the City of Sheffield, 1843-1993 p.27 (1993)
  13. Archived 5 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  14. "About Us". Smiffys.com. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  15. http://www.rtpi.org.uk/rtpi_east_midlands/
  16. "West Lindsey Marks Green Building Completion". Tenbees.co.uk. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  17. Commemoration plaque beside the water tower
  18. Thomson, William (2016). The Book of Tides. Hachette UK. p. 146. ISBN 978-1786480804.
  19. "Gainsborough". The Logistics Institute Data Observatory. University of Hull. Retrieved 20 May 2020. Labelled as Britain's most inland port...Nowadays, very few vessels sails as far up the River Trent as Gainsborough...
  20. "Goole, East Yorkshire - Britain's most inland port". Yorkshire Life. Archant Community Media Ltd. 2010. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  21. "Port of Goole". Invest Humber. Marketing Humber and Humber Local Enterprise Partnership. Retrieved 20 May 2020. As the UK's most inland port, Goole is ideally situated for access to the country's transport infrastructure.
  22. "About Us". www.townhallgainsborough.co.uk.
  23. Gurney-Read, Josie (26 August 2016). "GCSE results 2016: state school results". The Telegraph. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  24. "Education | League Tables | Performance results for The Queen Elizabeth's High School, Gainsborough". BBC News. 13 January 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  25. "The Queen Elizabeth's High School, Gainsborough". Gov.uk. Department for Education. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  27. Derek McCulloch, "The Musical Oeuvre of Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon (1740–99)", Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle #33 (2000) .
  28. Plaque near birthplace
  29. "Famous People from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire". www.visitoruk.com. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  30. plaque at birthplace
  31. GH Cookson at the English National Football Archive (subscription required)
  32. "CUCKSON, George Herbert". Lincs to the Past. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
  33. "Who's Who in the Cinema", The Movie volume 13 p. 431. Orbis Publishing (1981)
  34. Michael Joyce (October 2004). The Football League player's records 1888 to 1939. ISBN 1899468676.
  35. "Obituary: Bill Podmore". The Independent. 25 January 1994.
  36. "Bill Podmore". IMDb.
  37. "Mervyn Winfield". Cricinfo.
  38. "John Alderton". IMDb.
  39. "John Hargreaves". Cricinfo.
  40. "Images for Kingdom Come Arthur Brown* – Galactic Zoo Dossier". www.discogs.com.
  41. "Gainsborough born actress who starred in Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead to open Heritage Centre". www.gainsboroughstandard.co.uk.
  42. footballer and manager"Steven Housham | Football Stats | Brigg Town | Age 44 | Soccer Base". www.soccerbase.com.
  43. [P. Buckley (2003), The Rough Guide to Rock, Rough Guides, London, pp. 1200–1201
  44. The Newsroom (19 July 2018). "Gainsborough students show off town's potential to German visitors". Gainsborough Standard. JPIMedia Publishing Ltd.
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