A gateway to Yorkshire that attracts US tourists and music superstars
Bawtry’s market, which started in 1213, may have stopped running (for now), but it is a town unusually rich in history. David Behrens reports.
THE WELCOME sign on the road into Bawtry is somewhat ambiguous. It has been, it says, a “historic market town since 1213”.
The provenance of what has long been considered the gateway to Yorkshire, barely half-a-mile from the border with Nottinghamshire, is indisputable.
It’s the use of the present tense that is open to question, because no-one can say when the last market took place. It was certainly some decades ago.
“People often say they remember coming from miles away for the Sunday market,” says Sarah White, who runs a delicatessen and an opticians in Bawtry and is the vicechairwoman of the local retail association.
“I used to go as a child. There was some sort of loophole that allowed us to have a market before Sunday trading was legalised.”
She remembers it being “a fair size, with lots of hustle and bustle” as people weaved their way between the stalls and the antique shops.
“Maybe it stopped around 1980,” she says. “No-one knows why. No-one talks about it.”
It stood just off the high street, on a site now occupied by the sympathetically-designed Courtyard shopping centre, although its historic site was Market Hill, which is now a car park.
It is also where the town had gone a small way towards resurrecting its retail heritage, by inviting a local fruit and veg dealer to operate five days a week under the shelter of a gazebo, an addition Ms White says has been “an absolute godsend” for local shoppers.
“If the locals aren’t using the town there’s no point,” she says. “We want people to look at Bawtry as a destination. That’s what will keep it alive.”
The town’s Mayor, Alan Claypole, who oversaw the
innovation, says many would like to see a return to a full weekly market – an aspiration that is likely to factor into next year’s negotiations for the renewal of the car park management contract.
“The diversity of shops is not as wide as we would like,” he says, especially since the Post Office and the last bank closed.
“The days of the butcher and baker on the high street have long gone, but our neighbourhood plan has made it clear to us that residents would like to see a wider range of shops.”
Nevertheless, he adds, Bawtry is “a vibrant place to come to in the evening, especially at the weekend”.
Despite the disappearance of the stalls and the well-aged old market cross in the middle of the car park, Bawtry is a town unusually rich in history.
It is also unusual, for a place of its size, to have a four star hotel at its heart.
This is The Crown, an 18th century former posting house on the Great North Road from London to Edinburgh, which passed through Bawtry on its way to Doncaster.
Today, it is the overnight stopover of choice for showbusiness types playing the Sheffield Arena, half-an-hour away.
The band Boyzone and, reputedly, Michael Jackson’s backing musicians have been among those checking in.
A few yards down the high street, with many elegant restaurants and galleries in between, is the vast and elaborate, Tuscan-influenced and Grade II listed Bawtry Hall, which the hotel now operates as a wedding venue.
But in its history is tied up another detail of the town’s past, for it was here that the RAF ran its meteorological service, relaying geographically-labelled forecasts to the BBC which made Bawtry seem like the epicentre of Yorkshire, so far as the weather was concerned.
The service stopped when the
RAF moved out in the 1980s after an occupation that had lasted half-a-century.
Katey Dent, sales manager for the hall and hotel, says Bawtry’s meteorological heritage is little remembered, but that an older historical connection keeps the town on the American tourism map.
It was in the villages of Scrooby, a mile-and-a-half to the south, and Austerfield to the north, that William Bradford and William Brewster, two of the founding fathers of the United States, began their journeys to the new world.
Both were Pilgrims who travelled on board the Mayflower in 1620.
The 400th anniversary of the voyage this year should have been a tourism bonanza, but with the world in lockdown, The Crown had to sit it out.
At least, says Ms Dent, its bookings diary for next year and beyond is looking healthy, as weddings and holidays are hastily rearranged.
The town has emerged from quarantine with cautious optimism, says Russell Jones, who owns the long established fashion business Robinsons of Bawtry.
“If you’d asked me six months ago I’d have been waxing lyrical about how brilliant the place is, but like everywhere else it’s really feeling the pinch.
“There was a feeling that if you had the right work ethic, all you had to do was open a business here. But the last couple of years have seen a bit of a downturn as shopping habits have changed.”