Wilfred goes back in time: Part I

Sherwood Forest

Hello!  It's me, Wilfred!  Last week was my half-term break from Ravenstone and Daddy and Poppy wanted to take me on an adventure back in time.




Me playing in the Princess Diana Fountain, Hyde Park

One reason Dad always wanted to come to England is because his Grandma Storey came from here.  Actually, both Dad's Storey grandparents were English, just one was born in England and the other side lived in Canada 150 years. 


Dad's Grandma came to Canada to find a husband and have a family.
She did.  My Great Grandma seated right, Great Grandpa on left.

When Dad was little, he and his brother, would go to stay on his grandparent's farm.  They slept in an iron bed with saggy springs that made them roll into the middle and in the morning, when they heard their Grandpa heading downstairs to go to the barn, Uncle Jim would jump up and chase after him and my dad would run across the hall and hop into bed with my great grandma.  Dad would lie next to Great Grandma until she couldn't pretend she was sleeping anymore and then he would ask her to she tell him stories about the "olden days" in England before the wars when she was little and about her part of Nottinghamshire close to Sherwood Forest -- the land of Robin Hood. 

The old coach inn in Gamston, north of Nottingham, where
the Great North Road meets the road to Sherwood Forest

Dad's grandma died a long time ago, but Dad still wanted to go see the places for himself -- if for no other reason, he said, than to hear her voice again.  I didn't really understand that, but I have read a book about Robin Hood and Poppy said we would do this for Dad.

Great Grandma Storey was born in a village called Gamston.  To get there, we took the Piccadilly Line from Gloucester Road to Kings Cross Station where we caught a 10:00 a.m. Hull Train to Doncaster, and then we got a taxi to the Robin Hood Airport where we picked up a rental car.   


Hull train at Kings Cross

Taxi at Doncaster

Car pick-up at Robin Hood

Dad and Poppy said this would be an "adventure".  Poppy doesn't drive cars with gear shifts and Dad hadn't driven one as long as he had lived with Poppy (a LONG time).  Dad said it was like riding a bicycle -- except bicycles don't stall in roundabouts.  Poppy was nervous about Dad on the wrong side of the road, but Dad said that wasn't as hard to get used to as working the gear shift with his left hand.  He kept reaching for controls on the wrong side of the steering wheel, and muttering about old dogs and new tricks, and how narrow the roads were.  Poppy grabbed the dashboard a few times, Dad growled a lot and I said maybe we should not talk to him while he was driving... but Dad soon got the hang of it and we only scraped the tires against the curb a couple of times.

We found our hotel, Ye Olde Bell, a coaching inn on the Great North Road that has been in business for three hundred years.   Do you know why a stage coach is called a stage coach?  In olden times when you made a long journey by coach you kept the same coach, but the horses where changed at each "stage" at a coach inn while the passengers ate their meals.


Me with Dad and Ye Olde Bell Inn

After we ate our lunch, we drove a little further down the Great North Road to Gamston.  The Great North Road goes in almost a straight line all the way from London to Scotland.  It was built by Romans and was the main road in medieval times, back when Robin Hood was robbing rich baddies and giving to poor goodies.  And we actually drove on it!  Can you even believe it?
  

The village of Gamston is in the middle of green and yellow fields with hedges instead of fences.  Dad kept saying how much it looked like farm land in Ontario, and he hoped that made Great Grandma feel at home there.  Dad explained that when his grandma was little, before the wars, most of the land here belonged to rich families and the farmers worked for them.  Richies lived in a big house called a manor and farmers lived in little cottages that the richies owned and they had to pay rent. So, it looks a bit different from Ontario, because there aren't little farms and houses and barns everywhere.  Instead, there are acres and acres of fields and every three or four miles a little village where the workers cottages are all clumped together. 

The country near Gamston looks like southern Ontario.

A Nottinghamshire village in the Idle River Valley

Gamston is just a little clump of cottages, a manor house and barns and a big old church on the banks of the River Idle near to Gamston Wood.  We stopped to look in the old churchyard, but Dad didn't see anybody he was looking for... or their gravestones at least.  Dad was disappointed, but not surprised.  He said, Great Grandma was from ordinary farm workers and at the end of their days, not very many farm people had money left for headstones, because they cost a month’s pay.  The church at Gamston is a thousand years old, but there were only about a hundred gravestones in the yard.



St. Peter's Gamston churchyard

Dad, disappointed but not surprised

My dad likes looking up stuff on his computer and he found old census records for Gamston from a 100 years ago that told him where his grandma's family used to live.  There are no street numbers in Gamston, but Dad knew that once we crossed the river, Great Grandma’s family lived in a cottage next door to where a brewer lived (a brewer makes BEER!).  That is where Dad's grandma was born. 

When we crossed the river, all we saw was an empty field.  Dad was disappointed again.  But beyond a clump of trees, we saw a brick house with a wall around it.  We slowed down and Dad spotted a sign that said, "Brewery House".
  

Me, on the trail

AHA!

We got out of the car for a closer look.  And  guess what?  We found a sign that pointed down a lane next to the Brewer's and hidden from the road was a brick cottage!  It was covered in roses and had a bunny in a cage and looked friendly, so we knocked on the door.  The lady who answered was surprised to see two Canadians standing outside but she said she would be happy for us to take a picture.


The house where Great Grandma was born.  That's me looking at their bunny.

The fields and river bank were Great Grandma played

After we left Gamston, we headed across country along windy narrow roads so that Dad could check out other villages where ancestors lived, heading for a village called Laneham.  My great grandma had a sad little-kid life.  The manor didn't need farm workers because tractors and farm machines got invented.  Her family left Gamston when she was three so her dad could find work in the steel mills in Sheffield.  They  were very poor and lived in a part called Pitsmoor where the sky was black with coal smoke.  My dad calls it, Dickensian (which means you wouldn't want to live there). 

Pitsmoor

Great Grandma's parents got sick.  Her mom died when Great Grandma was seven and her mom was just twenty-seven.  Her dad died two years later.   Great Grandma was an orphan.  She and her sisters and brother were split between relatives and Great Grandma ended up with her dad's mom in Laneham.

Dad knew that his grandma had lived someplace called "Eagle House" in Laneham.  Dad  even found a picture of it online.  We drove through Laneham with our eyes peeled, but Dad knew it the minute he saw it.  I am pretty sure Great Grandma would still recognize it, if she was here today.



Eagle House on right.  Can you see the eagle above the garden gate?
Maybe the lady in front is my 3 x Great Grandma 



In the old pictures, Laneham looks better than Pitsmoor -- but what wouldn't?  The village is kind of wrecky today.  A big power plant was built outside of it and now most of the village is empty and falling down.  Sad for Dad.  He isn't sure how long his grandma lived here or where she went from here.  He says there are a lot of things you don't think to ask when you are a kid.  But after the Great War, Great Grandma was lonely and working as a flower seller, so she got on a boat by herself and came to Canada. 

Village hall in Laneham

The church across the road from Eagle House

The power plant next to the village

The next day, we toured around more and looked at more tiny olden villages, where my long ago family lived.
 

Our wrong side of the road rental car

Sutton cum Lound home of Great Grandma's great grandma... too many grandma's for my head... 

In a village called Blyth, we talked to an old lady who was out sweeping her driveway.  When she heard what we were looking for, she told us that she was the church verger and if we wanted to have a look inside her church, she would give us the key!   Inside, we found old, old stuff: the crypt of a Knight Templar, medieval painting and a sign with long ago family names on it (Barlow & Crofts) leaving money for the poor. 

Me with the key!

Yep, these bells are connected...

Where they baptized 800-year-ago babies...

Medieval altar painting

Screens with Saints faces scratched off in the reformation

Our long ago relations giving to the poor

We visited where long ago ancestors lived in an ancient village, Gringley on the Hill, where Poppy and I saw a market cross that had stood there since 1252. 

After a morning of church and village exploring, we went into the old market town of Retford.  We had lunch in a tea room on the town square.   The tea room was called "the Drawing Room" because it was on the second floor of what had been a Georgian house.  The long ago mansion belonged to a doctor, whose housekeeper was ANOTHER of Great Grandma's great grandmas and this is where she lived after her husband died and her children were grown up and gone.  Sheesh... I can't keep track of all the grandmas...

Me in Retford

Dad at the good doctor's mansion... now a jewelry store and a tea room

Me and Poppy in Retford's square... getting ancestor exhaustion...

I know Poppy and I promised this one was for Dad, but by now I wanted to do something that was just for a kid.  Dad had an idea how we could do something for both of us.  From Gamston, we took the fork in the road nine miles east to Sherwood Forest!



Getting my bearings

The name Sherwood came from "Shire - wood"  -- the wood belonging to the shire.  It was a favorite royal hunting forest ever since the Norman kings took over in 1066.  King John claimed it as his private property and what is left of his old hunting lodge can still be seen near Clipstone. 

There is lots of Robin Hood stuff in the village of Edwinstowe.  There are shops and crazy restaurants, fun rides and wacky Robin Hood things to do. 


I took this picture

But people really come for the 450 acre forest and its amazing 500 year-old oak trees.  Poppy and Daddy and I followed the pathway back deep into the woods. 


The mysterious wood

You could imagine Robin Hood and his merry band hiding in the trees.  We even saw an archer practising archery. 
 

We saw archers in costume like this one

The star of the show is the Major Oak.   It is a HUGE ancient oak tree. The legend is that Robin Hood hid inside it to get away from the Sheriff of Nottingham.  And it is true you can get inside the hollow part -- or at least you could.  The Major Oak was popular for tourists to come to see when Great Grandma was a little girl and people used to get their picture taken hiding in it.  In fact, so many people came that the earth around the roots got packed down too hard and the 800 year-old tree started to die.  Now, it is behind a fence and is all propped up with sticks. 


Major Oak in Great Grandma's day



The Major Oak now

 Dad says it is not likely that this is the same tree Robin Hood hid in, because Robin Hood was 800 years ago and this tree would have been little then.  It doesn't matter.  It is still very cool.

Me being Robin Hood..in a different tree

It is also cool that maybe Great Grandma came to see this tree when she was my age and maybe it looked about the same.  Dad said she was always liked telling him stories about Robin Hood.  Maybe she came here in happy times with her mom and dad -- just like me and Daddy and Poppy.  I hope so.

That is all for today, but I will say "To be continued..." and not "The End."   Come back soon for "Wilfred goes back in time: Part II." 

Bye for now,
Wilfie