Gainsborough, Lincolnshire

Coordinates: 53°24′06″N 0°46′24″W / 53.4016°N 0.7732°W / 53.4016; -0.7732
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Gainsborough
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townGAINSBOROUGH
Postcode districtDN21
Dialling code01427
PoliceLincolnshire
FireLincolnshire
AmbulanceEast Midlands
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Lincolnshire
53°24′06″N 0°46′24″W / 53.4016°N 0.7732°W / 53.4016; -0.7732
All Saints Church, Gainsborough
Gainsborough Old Hall
Gladstone Street, Gainsborough

Gainsborough is a market town,

Lincoln, 16 miles (26 km) south-west of Scunthorpe, 20 miles south-east of Doncaster and 39 miles (63 km) east of Sheffield. It is England's furthest inland port at over 55 miles (89 km) from the North Sea.[3][4][5]

History

Gainsborough Old Hall
The Aegir (tidal bore) on the Trent
The Market Place, with Gainsborough Town Hall in the background

King Alfred, Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great

The place-name Gainsborough first appears in the

Vikings as an administrative centre was influenced by its proximity to the Danish stronghold at Torksey.[7]

In 868

King Alfred married Ealhswith (Ealswitha), daughter of Æthelred Mucel, chief of the Gaini, whence the town gets its name.[8][9]

Historically, Gainsborough is the "capital that never was". Towards the end of July 1013, the Dane

Cnut (Canute) arrived in Gainsborough with an army of conquest. Sweyn defeated the English opposition, and King Ethelred fled the country. Sweyn was declared King of England and 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 (now known as Castle Hills).[9] However, Sweyn died, or perhaps was killed five weeks later in Gainsborough. His son Cnut established a base elsewhere. So Gainsborough was named as capital of England and of Denmark for five weeks in the year 1013.[10]

Cnut may have performed his unsuccessful attempt to turn the tide back in the River Trent at Gainsborough.[11] Historians[who?] believe he may have been demonstrating on the Trent 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 it may have been a myth or a fable.

Medieval Gainsborough

The Domesday Book (1086) records that Gainsborough was a community of

villeins and sokemen
, tenants of Geoffrey de Guerche.

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

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

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.[12]

Churches

All Saints Church, Gainsborough

The first record 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 English 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

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.[13]
All Saints' remains the main parish church of the town.

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 and is now the Trinity Arts Centre. St John the Divine church was closed in 2002 and it is now used for a cafe and community centre.

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.[7]

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 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

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 Ju 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 died and 50 houses were damaged.[15]

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.[16]

Governance

The Guildhall, former offices of the West Lindsey District Council

The town was before 1974 in the

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 Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983.

Oil

In July 1958, BP discovered oil at Corringham, then at Gainsborough in January 1959.[17]

Geography

A631 bridge over the Trent

The town is at the meeting point of the east–west

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

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 in 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 is also possible that she witnessed the Trent Aegir, which inspired the flood in her story's climax.[7][page needed]

Economy

Boiler-maker and ironworks

Gainsborough has a long history of industry. It was the manufacturing base of

steam engines were sold worldwide until it closed in the 1980s.[7] The site is now split among various companies. Tesco
in Beaumont Street and Dransfield's occupy about nine acres; the remainder is held 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 about 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 9 acres (3.6 ha) 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.

There is a

Co-op
by the Ship Inn pub in Morton by Gainsborough, one on the site of the Jack and Jill pub by St Georges Community Hall on Heapham Road, and another on the site of the Peacock pub by the Gainsborough Town Tennis Club on Corringham Road.

Packaging

Another area of Gainsborough industry is Rose Brothers,[18] named after William German Rose and Walter Rose, the co-founders. In 1893 William Rose invented the world's first packaging machine. Two years later it bought the Trentside Works site and started to expand into many other areas, producing items such as starch, razor blades and sweets such as Cadbury's chocolates, its name appearing on the Roses selection. The firm produced seaside rock-making machines, cigarette-making machines and bread-slicing and wrapping machines. When it closed, A. M. P. Rose bought the confectionery packaging side.[7] The Rose Brothers Ground hosted cricket matches.

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

Wigs, jokes and exhausts

Gainsborough is the home of two of the largest importers of

fancy dress
and party market.

Another local business is

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.[20]

West Lindsey District Council had its offices at the Guildhall, Lord Street, but moved in January 2008 to a £4.3 million new-build in Marshall's Yard.[21]

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 water tower in Heapham Road was built in 1897 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.[22]

Transport

Railway

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

The town has two railway stations on different routes. The main station is

Sheffield and Doncaster. Sheffield services generally call at Retford, Worksop and Sheffield only, then continue towards Leeds. The other station is Gainsborough Central 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 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.[23] Those from Sheffield and Doncaster meet at West Trent Junction on the opposite side in Nottinghamshire.

West Burton Power Station
is three miles (4.8 km) to the south-west of the town, next to the Sheffield-Lincoln Line.

Buses

The town bus station in Hickmen Street has frequent services on Monday to Saturday, but no Sunday services. Most town routes are served by

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 bus services run during school terms.

Rivers

River Trent in Gainsborough, 2009

Gainsborough is claimed as the British port furthest inland.[24][25] 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.[26][27]

At the A631 Trent Bridge, there was a ferry 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.[7][page needed]

In the 1970s, the town council planned to build another bridge adjacent to the existing one on the North side and extend the Thorndike Way dual-carriageway across the river and join The Flood Road dual-carriageway. However, all of the funding for the project was given for the completion of the Humber Bridge.

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 in the early 20th century, the club was professional and a member of the Football League. The Gainsborough United F.C. was active in 1980.[28]

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

The town is home to the Gainsborough & Morton Striders Athletic Club, who in 2013 were awarded England Athletics' Run England National Group of the Year.[29] The club was founded in July 1983.[30]

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

Media

Television signals are received from either the Belmont or Emley Moor TV transmitters.[31][32] Local radio stations are

Lincs FM and Trentside Radio, a community based radio station.[33]
The town's local newspapers are the
Gainsborough Standard and Lincolnshire Echo
.

Attractions

The house and grounds of Richmond Park, in the north of the town, 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.

Gainsborough Town Hall, which was built in 1892, is now an entertainment venue with seating for up to 150 people.[34]

Renovation of the town's river banks was completed in 2002, providing riverside access. 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 fell to financial constraints.

Trinity Art Centre hosts live music, plays, comedy, and also screens films. There is a volunteer-run charity called Gainsborough Heritage Centre, with displays of a range of object from the town's past.

Education

Unlike most of the UK, Lincolnshire retains a

Queen Elizabeth's High School (selective state grammar school from 11 to 18 featuring a sixth form) on Morton Terrace (A159).[35]

QEHS students earn outstanding GCSE and

A-Level results and the school is over-subscribed.[36][37]
The town has several primary schools.

There are links beyond the town to the John Leggott Sixth Form College in Scunthorpe, North Lindsey College, and Lincoln College, which has a branch at Gainsborough College in 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:

Arms

Coat of arms of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire
Notes
Originally granted to Gainsborough Urban District Council on 15 March 1950.[56]
Crest
On a wreath of the colours out of a mural coronet two anchors in saltire Or.
Escutcheon
Vert on a fesse wavy Argent in chief a cog-wheel between two garbs and in base an ancient crown Or a fesse wavy Azure.
Motto
Strive For The Gain Of All

References

  1. Office for National Statistics
    . Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  2. ^ City Population. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  3. ^ "Ports.org.uk/ Gainsborough". ports.org.uk. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  4. ^ "Gainsborough's Port and River Memories". G & D H A. 24 April 2020. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  5. ^ "The Trent at Gainsborough". graville.com. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  6. ^ Eilert Ekwall,The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, p. 191.
  7. ^
    ISBN 0860232697
  8. ISBN 0-7509-2131-5
  9. ^ a b J. Charles Cox (1916), Lincolnshire p. 133; Methuen & Co. Ltd. Retrieved 23 April 2011.
  10. ^ BBC article. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  11. ^ "Viking Gainsborough: Former capital promotes Sweyn Forkbeard links". BBC. 25 December 2014. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  12. ISBN 0-902662-43-0
  13. ^ Monument to Richard Rollett at All Saints' Church, Gainsborough.
  14. ^ "New York Times 30 May 1897" (PDF).
  15. ^ Gainsborough Heritage Society Gainsborough at War 1939–1945.
  16. ^ Clyde Binfield, The History of the City of Sheffield, 1843–1993 p. 27 (1993).
  17. ^ "Oli Fields". Trent Vale. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  18. ^ [1] Archived 5 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ "About Us". Smiffys.com. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  20. ^ "East Midlands". Royal Town Planning Institute.
  21. ^ "West Lindsey Marks Green Building Completion". Tenbees.co.uk. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  22. ^ Commemoration plaque beside the water tower
  23. ^ Whyles, Dafydd (Summer 2022). "LIFE INSIDE A BRITISH SIGNAL BOX". Railroad Heritage. Center for Railroad Photography & Art. pp. 24–35. Retrieved 31 January 2024.
  24. ISBN 978-1786480804
    .
  25. ^ "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...
  26. ^ "Goole, East Yorkshire – Britain's most inland port". Yorkshire Life. Archant Community Media Ltd. 2010. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  27. ^ "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.
  28. ^ "Football Club History Database – Gainsborough United".
  29. ^ "Run England volunteers recognised at England Athletics Awards". Run Together. England Athletics. 21 October 2013. Retrieved 8 January 2022. Gainsborough & Morton Striders won Group of the Year.
  30. ^ "About The Club". Gainsborough & Morton Striders. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  31. ^ "Belmont (Lincolnshire, England) Full Freeview transmitter". May 2004.
  32. ^ "Emley Moor (Kirklees, England) Full Freeview transmitter". May 2004.
  33. ^ "Trentside Radio Community Radio Supporting Gainsborough and surrounding communities". Archived from the original on 11 November 2023. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
  34. ^ "Room Hire". Th-exchange. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  35. ^ Gurney-Read, Josie (26 August 2016). "GCSE results 2016: state school results". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  36. ^ "Education | League Tables | Performance results for The Queen Elizabeth's High School, Gainsborough". BBC News. 13 January 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  37. ^ "The Queen Elizabeth's High School, Gainsborough". Gov.uk. Department for Education. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  38. ^ a b c * This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gainsborough". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 389–390.
  39. ^ Derek McCulloch, "The Musical Œuvre of Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon (1740–99)", Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle #33 (2000) [2].
  40. ^ Plaque near birthplace
  41. ^ a b c "Famous People from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire". www.visitoruk.com. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  42. ^ plaque at birthplace
  43. ^ GH Cookson at the English National Football Archive (subscription required)
  44. ^ "CUCKSON, George Herbert". Lincs to the Past. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
  45. ^ "Who's Who in the Cinema", The Movie volume 13 p. 431. Orbis Publishing (1981)
  46. ISBN 1899468676
    .
  47. ^ "Obituary: Bill Podmore". The Independent. 25 January 1994.
  48. ^ "Mervyn Winfield". Cricinfo.
  49. ^ Susan Mary Wakefield, Death Notice, New Zealand Herald, 23 November 2022 (Retrieved 30 December 2022)
  50. ^ "John Hargreaves". Cricinfo.
  51. ^ "Images for Kingdom Come Arthur Brown* – Galactic Zoo Dossier". www.discogs.com.
  52. ^ P. Buckley (2003), The Rough Guide to Rock, Rough Guides, London, pp. 1200–1201.
  53. ^ "Gainsborough born actress who starred in Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead to open Heritage Centre". www.gainsboroughstandard.co.uk.
  54. ^ "Steven Housham | Football Stats". www.soccerbase.com.
  55. ^ The Newsroom (19 July 2018). "Gainsborough students show off town's potential to German visitors". Gainsborough Standard. JPIMedia Publishing Ltd.
  56. ^ "East Midlands Region". Civic Heraldry of England. Retrieved 8 March 2021.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Gainsborough.
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