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This fantastic article comes from our Spring 2000 Heritage Newsletter:

When King John died in Newark Castle in 1216, the cause was believed to have been his overindulgence in a favourite food – lampreys. He was not the only king to have enjoyed the dish, Henry I reputedly died of a ‘surfeit of lampreys’ in 1135. Lampreys were a Medieval delicacy. The ones on which John feasted will have come from the river Trent, one of the few places in the country where they could be caught in abundance. They remained a Nottinghamshire delicacy for centuries but are now little known.

The lamprey looks like an eel. Its mouth is a round sucker. It has one nostril on the top of its head, seven round gills on either side of its head, and a pair of eyes. The gills and nostril when viewed from the side look like eyes, hence the creature’s Nottinghamshire name of the ‘nine eyed lomper’.

Two species of lamprey may be found in the Trent, the river lamprey which grows to about 30cm long, and the brook lamprey, shorter at 15cm. The river lamprey is a parasite of freshwater fish on to which it hooks with its strong sucker-like mouth and ring of sharp teeth. It will also feed on carrion. The adult brook lamprey does not feed at all. Anglers rarely notice the fish because they are not often caught with rod and line. Traditionally, the lampreys were netted or caught in baskets during their spring migration up stream where they went to spawn and then die. The weir at Averham was a favourite place for catching the lampreys, and sometimes they may be spotted there, hanging on to stones with the suckers of their mouths, tails streaming like a ribbon in the current.

While the deaths of both kings were ascribed at the time to their excessive fondness for the fish, other reasons are possible. Henry I was 67 when he died, old by the standards of the time. Only a few days before John reached Newark, he suffered the disastrous loss of his baggage train whilst travelling across the Wash, and his death may be a consequence of this accident. However, the specific mention of lampreys suggests that both kings had been presented with the delicacy shortly before they died. Lampreys live in unpolluted water. Where they are taken from polluted rivers, they can carry harmful bacteria. Could the Medieval fishermen of Newark have prepared a treat for the king, only to inadvertently kill him with food poisoning?

Above: River lamprey (By Tiit Hunt - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0).

Lampreys can be prepared in a number of different ways; stewed, potted, or baked into pies, but frying makes them tough and chewy. They may be treated as eels. Here is a recipe to try;

Lamprey Pie:

• 1-2 Lampreys
• 150g Lincolnshire sausage meat
• Salt and Pepper
• Packet puff pastry
• Juice of a lemon
• Parsley
• Nutmeg
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 200ml Bechamel Sauce

Cut the lampreys into pieces 5cm long. Line an oven proof dish with half of the puff pastry. Cover the bottom of the dish with the sausage meat. Cover with the lampreys. Add a pinch of salt, pepper, a little nutmeg, the shallot, lemon juice and a good sprinkling of chopped fresh parsley. Cover the pie with the rest of the pastry and bake until the top has risen and pale golden. Remove from the oven and through the vent pour the Bechamel sauce. Return to the oven for 5-10 minutes. Serve immediately.

Whatever the truth behind the mystery of John’s death, this is certainly a dish fit for a king!

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.

This wonderful addition comes from our Summer 2009 Newsletter:

‘Three wise men of Gotham

Went to sea in a bowl;

And if the bowl had been stronger,

My song would have been longer’

History:

Around the year 1540, an amusing collection of twenty stories were published entitled ‘Certaine Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham’. This book was written by the mysterious ‘A.B. of Phisicke Doctor’.

The pseudonym A.B. was supposed to represent Andrew Borde, an eminent physician and writer who among other things was famous for his wit. In all probability, this was merely a play by the publishers to make people believe that Borde was indeed the author. Interestingly, Borde never denied involvement in the publication.

In subsequent editions, the word ‘mad’ was changed for ‘wise’ and the tales were born.

Although The Wise Men of Gotham is a collection of stories compiled into a single work, it is highly likely that the tales were not the work of one single author, and that many of the stories, perhaps all, existed before 1540. The wise fools of Gotham are first mentioned in the fifteenth century. They appear in the ‘Towneley Mystery Plays’, and one of the later published tales makes an appearance in a manuscript entitled ‘The Wickirk Play’, written between 1425 and 1450.

The Wise Men of Gotham was such a popular publication that the work continued to be re-published almost unchanged up to the end of the nineteenth century. The tales were even exported to America by Washington Irvine who then bestowed the title of ‘Gotham City’ (a city of fools) on his native New York. This in turn turned developed into the Gotham City of Batman.

Above: William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Three Wise Men of Gotham, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose. Image: Public Domain.

The tales:

There are two popular versions of the tale. In the first, King John was making his way north towards Nottingham. His chosen route would have taken him directly through land owned by the village of Gotham. At that time, it was believed that wherever the king walked, was from that day a royal highway, with public rights of way. Therefore, to avoid the expense of paying for the upkeep of the new King’s Highway, when King John’s heralds arrived in the village, the good folk of Gotham feigned madness. As madness was thought to be contagious, when this news reached the ears of the King, he quickly changed direction to avoid the village of ‘mad men’.

The second version of the story states that King John was actually considering building a hunting lodge near Gotham. In order to prevent the loss of pasture land and the expense of supporting the royal court, the story continues in the same manner as the first, with the result that the King changes his plans and builds his lodge elsewhere.

There is not enough room here to tell all of the twenty stories of the wise men of Gothams’ strange behaviour, but here is our favourite:

The Cheeses That Ran Away…

There was a man of Gotham who filled a sack with cheeses to sell at the market in Nottingham. He carried the sack of his back, and when he became tired he paused along the way to rest.

Eventually he reached the summit of the last hill before he came to Nottingham Bridge. There he rested, and when he rose to continue his journey, a cheese slipped out of the sack and rolled down the hill towards the bridge.

‘Ah! Mr Cheese,’ said the man, ‘so you can run to market alone, can you? I wish I had known that before. It would have saved me the trouble of carrying you. Well, then, if you can go to market alone, so can the other cheeses, and I’ll send them along after you.’ So, he laid down his sack, took out the cheeses, and rolled them all down the hill. As the last one spun down the road, he shouted, ‘I charge you all to meet me at the market-place.’

Some of the cheeses went into one bush, and some went into another bush, but the man did not notice that, and he trudged on cheerfully to the market expecting the cheeses would meet him there.

All day long he loitered about the market. As evening approached, he began to inquire among the other traders if they had seen his cheeses come to the market.

‘Who should bring them?’ asked one of the traders.

‘Nobody,’ replied the man of Gotham, ‘They would bring themselves. They know the way well enough.’

‘Why, then, aren’t they here?’ said the marketman.

‘A plague on them all!’, cried the owner of the cheeses, ‘It has just occurred to me what the trouble is. I did fear, when I saw them start off so fast, that they would run beyond the market, and I’m sure they must now be miles away on the road to York.’ This said, he hired a horse and rode in all haste to York in pursuit of his cheeses.

Above: Gotham Legends wind vane. Image: By John Beniston - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Which Gotham?

The tales Wise Men of Gotham has long been associated with the Gotham of Nottinghamshire. However, there is another Gotham, in Sussex, that also lays claim to the tales. Fortunately, the Sussex Gotham was never a village or even a hamlet. In actuality, it was only a manor in the parish of Hailsham, a fact that any local writer would have been well aware of. Also, early editions of the book actually mention Nottingham market and that the village was on a direct route to York. Furthermore, it clearly states in one of the stories that the villages paid rent to the lordships of Leicester and Chester which is a known historical fact of the Nottinghamshire village.

Nevertheless, it seems that Gotham only became the ‘best known’ village of fools because of the published tales. There are at least 45 other villages in Britain that claim as their own one or more of the Gotham tales. Gotham is unique in that it not only preserves a complete collection of tales but also preserves many of the locations of the stories.

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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Miner2Major is a Landscape Partnership scheme, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, focusing on the natural and cultural heritage of the Sherwood Forest area. It is one of the aims of Miner2Major to explore and celebrate the built heritage of its area.

Nottinghamshire County Council’s Historic Environment Officer for Buildings, Janine Buckley, delved into the country house stables of the Sherwood Forest region. Often overlooked in historical narratives, this new publication tells their story.

The horse was vital to the country estate. Stables to accommodate carriage and riding horses as well as hunters and racehorses were erected on a grand scale. Just as horses were status symbols, the buildings that housed them conveyed their owner’s status both in their external architecture and as technologically advanced buildings that restored horses back to full health after work.

Through four case studies (Rufford Abbey, Rufford Farm Stud, Park Hall and Newstead Abbey), this publication examines the form and function of country house stables, the architectural significance of the buildings, their history, and their eventual adaptation for other purposes. Discover how the buildings themselves reveal details of those who worked in them, the experience of the horses that lived in them, and the relationships between man and horse. Learn about messages found under floorboards and how the marks made by horses tell their own stories.

Printed copies of Country House Stables of Nottinghamshire are available free of charge in larger Nottinghamshire libraries and The Book Case bookshop in Lowdham and Five Leaves bookshop in Nottingham. It is also available to download as an e-book here.

Links to the Historic Environment Record:

Rufford Abbey Stables

Rufford Stud Farm Stables

Park Hall Stables

Newstead Abbey Stables

www.miner2major.org.uk

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