Pillars of Local Society

A Very Merry Christmas to all my friends in Unmitigated England

Untangled Notts

And so to the northernmost outposts of Nottinghamshire. Quite by accident I found myself on an old section of the Bawtry to Gainsborough road at a place remarkably called Drakeholes, and this pair of delightful, if somewhat forlorn, pair of lodges. Until recently they were apparently so overgrown they looked like they were constructed with architectural growths of ivy and other rampant vegetation. Now it's all been cleared away in anticipation of restoration, revealing the lodges as almost X-rays of buildings with the appearance of red brick both under the peeling stucco and in precariously revealed foundations. They once heralded a now lost driveway to Wiseton Hall, built in the early eighteenth century for the Acklom family but demolished and replaced by a smaller house in 1960. Equally remarkable is the fact that the foreground seen here is in fact the start of a tunnel on the Chesterfield Canal, which just to the north makes a sudden right-hand turn before decanting into the broad reaches of the River Trent at West Stockwith. A tiny brick tunnel entrance is just out of shot, adding another fascinating glimpse of an all but forgotten age.