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The Dukeries
WORKSOP AND THE MANOR
Although within the last twenty-five years Worksop has suffered many changes, unfortunate enough from an æsthetic point of view, the Dukeries end of the principal street still suggests the comfortable market town in the neighbourhood of folk of quality. The only relic of notable antiquity is the quaint inn, known as the Old Ship – a building with projecting upper story and carved oaken beams that might have been transported from Chester.
The twin-towered Priory Church, a gatehouse of singular interest, and some slight, gracefully proportioned ecclesiastical ruins are the main features of interest. The Priory was founded by William de Lovetot, and used by the canons of the order of St. Augustine. Great men were buried there, notably several chiefs of the Furnival family, who had for town residence Furnival's Inn in Holborn. The interior of the church contains some excellent round and octagonal pillars, and one or two ancient effigies. The walls are coated with stucco, which detracts considerably from the beauty of this handsomely proportioned building. One of the most interesting things to be seen is a piece of a human skull, pierced with an arrowhead. This hangs to the left of the doorway by which the vestry is reached. There is a weird superstition concerning the moving of this relic.
Near by is the ruined chapel, erected about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and in olden times must have blazed with gorgeous colours. The roof has fallen; little remains of its former beauty save the lancet windows. The double piscina and the sedilia are still in fair preservation, and we are shown the round holes in the stonework once filled with the pegs of the canons' oaken seats.
In the churchyard are a few quaint epitaphs for such as delight to dwell upon the virtues of the forgotten dead. The Priory Gatehouse at the farther end is perhaps one of the most interesting buildings of its kind in existence. The stonework is of soft grey, and the roof chiefly of well-coloured tiles. A roadway about fifteen yards in length passes through the building; the original ceiling of oaken beams with graceful braces is still in good condition. Above this was the Hospitium, or guest chamber, where may be seen the hooded chimney-piece and the hearth before which old-time travellers rested o' nights and told tales that Chaucer might have loved, before retiring to the smaller chambers, to sleep heavily after the good cheer provided by their priestly hosts. In front of this relic stands the old market cross; and near by, until within the nineteenth century, were the stocks for vagrants and refractory townsmen.
Camden tells us that in his time Worksop was "noted for its great produce of liquorice, and famous for the Earl of Shrewsbury's house, built in our memory by George Talbot, with the magnificence becoming so great an Earl, and yet below envy". In Park Street, not far from the Priory Gateway, is one of the entrances to the Manor Park. The trees still remaining are not noteworthy in the matter of size, with the exception of a few cedars and beeches near the terrace of the house. As one approaches, the Manor Hills, gently sloping and well wooded, with heather-covered clearings, may be seen to the left. As for the house itself, the garden front of to-day, without being of great architectural interest, has a very pleasant air of unpretentious comfort and brightness. There is a flower garden whose beds are edged with box and yew. The chief object of note is a long and high wall, probably a portion of the ancient house; this is somewhat dignified with its worn coping, whereon stand various urns the carving of which time has softened. From the terrace one looks down on the sloping park with its mere, and scattered trees, and graceful groups of young horses.
Passing round the house, and entering a vast gateway surmounted by a lion, one sees, to the right, part of the manor built after 1761, when the house which replaced the Elizabethan palace built by the Earl of Shrewsbury and his Countess Bess, with its pictures and furniture and some of the Arundelian marbles, was destroyed by fire. To my thinking, the most suggestive view of the present edifice is gained from the Mansfield road, within a few minutes' walk of the town.
From an ancient engraving we find that the first house bore some resemblance to Hardwick Hall, the great Bess's most successful building. It contained five hundred rooms; in front was a fine courtyard, with a central octagonal green plot surrounding a basin with a fountain. The artist gave to this a touch of life by drawing a coach and six proudly curving towards the outlet; on the lawns beyond are ladies with fan-shaped hoops, and thin-legged gentlemen with puffed coat skirts.
Of this house Horace Walpole writes, in 1756: "Lord Stafford carried us to Worksop, where we passed two days. The house is huge and one of the magnificent works of Old Bess of Hardwick, who guarded the Queen of Scots here for some time in a wretched little bedchamber within her own lofty one: – there is a tolerable little picture ('The story of Bathsheba, finely drawn and shaded, in faint colours') of Mary's needlework. The great apartment is vast and triste, the whole leanly furnished: the great gallery, of about two hundred feet, at the top of the house, is divided into a library and into nothing. The chapel is decent. There is no prospect, and the barren face of the country is richly furred with evergreen plantations." In 1761 he records that "Worksop – the new house – is burned down; I don't know the circumstances, it has not been finished a month; the last furniture was brought in for the Duke of York: I have some comfort that I had seen it; except the bare chamber in which the Queen of Scots lodged, nothing remained of ancient time".
Not only was Mary Stuart well acquainted with Worksop Manor, but later, her son, James the First, on his first progress to London, became the guest of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, her jailer's successor. In a letter to his agent, John Harpur, this nobleman writes forewarning him of the expected honour, and, after bidding him see to horses being in readiness, adds, as postcript: "I will not refuse anie fatt capons and hennes, partridges, or the like, yf the King come to me". We find that James left Edinburgh on the fifth of April, 1603, and reached Worksop on the twentieth, after leaving the High Sheriff of Yorkshire at Bawtry, and being met and escorted by his brother of Nottinghamshire. It is matter for surprise that the king accepted the Talbot hospitality, considering their melancholy connection with his mother's tragedy, but it is true that he never made parade of filial piety. At Worksop Park appeared a number of huntsmen, clad in Lincoln green, whose chief, "with a woodman's speech, did welcome him, offering His Majesty to show him some game, which he gladly consented to see, and, with a traine set, he hunted a good space, very much delighted: at last he went into the house, where he was so nobly received, with superfluitie of all things, that still every entertainment seemed to exceed other. In this place, besides the abundance of all provision and delicacies, there was most excellent soul-ravishing musique, wherewith His Highness was not a little delighted." One wonders if he was shown the royal prisoner's miserable little room. At Worksop he spent a night, and in the morning stayed for breakfast, which ended, "there was such store of provision left, of fowls, fish, and almost everything, besides bread, beere and wines, that it was left open for any man that would, to come and take".
In the State papers relating to the Rebellion of '45 may be found a curious and interesting account of a secret hiding-place, reached by lifting a sheet of lead on the roof. A tattling young woman told the story upon oath, describing a staircase that descended to a little room with a fireplace, a bed, and a few chairs, with a door in the wainscot that opened to a place full of arms. Unfortunately, both history and tradition are silent concerning any shelter offered by Worksop Manor to proscribed folk.
After the burning of the new house, in 1761, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Shrewsbury's descendant, laid the foundation stone of another in 1763. We learn that this was to have been one of the largest in England; but that only one side of the proposed quadrangle was completed, although five hundred workmen were employed, and closely supervised by the duchess in person. This stood for three-quarters of a century; then, the estate being sold to the Duke of Newcastle, the greater part of the house was pulled down and the present place built.
Of the original park, which Evelyn mentions as "sweet and delectable", nowadays there is but little to be seen. There still remains, however, a beech grove called the "Druid's Temple", a "Lover's Walk" for sentimental youth, and a wood of acacias and cedars, yews
