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Hamlet lay outside the town walls

I wrote last week about the 'lost' settlement of Little Lunnon which once formed part of the village of Scarrington near Bingham.

Another settlement which has disappeared from our area is the hamlet of Osmundthorpe which until the time of the Civil War in the 17th Century was located in that part of Newark which is now known as Northgate.

At that time Northgate lay outside the Borough of Newark (as defined by the medieval town walls) and, as such, was not officially considered part of the town.

The hamlet of Osmundthorpe, therefore, lying some way along Northgate, was both physically and administratively separated from Newark.

The entrance to Osmundthorpe lay at what is now the junction of Northgate and Queen's Road.

Here there was a small stream - the Goat or Goate Stream - which ran across Northgate and into the Trent by Water Lane. (Goat is thought to be a phonetic rendering of the Anglo-Saxon word gote meaning channel or stream).

R. F. Hodgkinson in his extracts from the Records of Newark (published 1921) makes reference to a bridge across the stream at this point which was know as the Goat Bridge.

He also locates two further bridges upstream on the Goat, one at "the bottom of the fields called the Appletons" (ie around the present junction of Appletongate and Queen's Road), and the other somewhat further west at the the bottom of Beacon Hill.

This was last known as the Swine Bridge. Hodgkinson quotes an entry in the borough records from November, 1639, when 7s 4d was paid for "materials and workmanship for repairing the Swine Bridge" while two further entries from 1666 mention materials such as stones, gravel and 'coggles' being used to repair other bridges over the Goat Stream.

Today the Goat Stream still exists although for most of its course it runs in an underground culvert beneath Sleaford Road and Queen's Road. At the little Ropewalk Pocket Park on Sleaford Road, however, it breaks surface to form an interesting wildlife water feature.

Evidence regarding the buildings which comprised Osmundthorpe is sparse but William Dickinson in his History of Newark (published 1816) does mention that the hamlet had its own chapel (located close to the Goat Bridge), while Maurice Barley in his survey of Newark in the 16th Century notes that the institution which became the Magnus Grammar School was probably first established in Osmundthorpe.

A deed from May, 1507, (quoted by N. G. Jackson in his history of the Magnus) makes reference to a Robert Kyrkbye of Osmundthorpe who was described as a 'singing man' (presumably a music teacher).

This is thought to be the same Kyrkbye who became first master of the Magnus Song School from 1532 to 1574. Dickinson's mention of a chapel at Osmundthorpe is intriguing since local legend has it (as recorded by R. V. Appleby in his quiz book on Newark) that timbers from a church at Osmundhthorpe were later used in the construction of Newark's old tithe barn on Lover's Lane (demolished 1960).

Recent dendrochronological work on some of the barn's surviving timbers suggests that the wood used was felled in about 1430.

If this connection between the tithe barn and the chapel at Osmundthorpe is correct, then it is possible that this date provides us with an indication as to when the latter may have been built.

Other references to the chapel suggest that, as a place of worship, it may have been used not merely by the residents of Osmundthorpe, but also by a second hamlet which grew up nearby and which was actually known as North Gate.

According to a written (but undated) account attributed to Thomas Heron (and quoted by William Dickinson) the hamlet of North Gate was slotted into the small area of land between the medieval walls of Newark and Osmundthorpe (ie between Bar Gate, where was located one of the three medieval entrances to Newark, and the present day Northgate/Queen's Road junction).

He says: "North Gate extended from the Bar Gate to a bridge, called Goat Bridge, which was over a stream that divided North Gate from Osmundthorpe.

To them (North Gate and Osmundthorpe) belonged nearly all the fields, the town of Newark having but a very small territory on the south and west sides of it". J. E. B. Gover in his Place Names of Nottinghamshire (1940) notes that 'Northgate Juxta Newer(c)k' is mentioned in Assize Rolls as a separate and distinct manor as early as the year 1280.

The demise of North Gate and Osmundthorpe is said by Dickinson to have occurred in the 17th Century as an indirect result of the Civil War. During the war Newark - both the medieval core and the hamlets which had grown up adjacent to it - were enclosed within a defensive circuit of earthworks.

Those constructed to the north of the town encompassed both North Gate and Osmundthorpe, and when the war came to an end these hamlets became subsumed and incorporated into the main precincts of Newark.

It is from this time, suggests Dickinson, that North Gate and Osmundthorpe ceased to exist as separate entities.

Today the name of Northgate is still in use in the town, although that of Osmundthorpe has completely disappeared. Older readers may remember a large private residence known as Osmundthorpe House on Appletongate, or indeed the Osmundthorpe Works of William Mumby's clothing factory next door.

When the latter finally closed in 1979, however, Newark may be said to have lost its last link with one of its nearest but most intriguing neighbours.

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