This is my home town, or to be more precise, where it is on the map.

Press HERE for the history of Newark in The Civil War

Newark-on-Trent, despite the derivation of its name (new work) has been around for some time. Recent excavations at the castle established that here was a settlement here in Anglo Saxon times. The Castle at Newark predates Bishop Alexander of Lincoln who substantially extended the living quarters in the twelfth century.

A settlement grew up where the Great North Road crossed the River Trent. The Fosse Way, a roman road running between Lincoln(Lindum) and Bath(Aqua Sulis) runs along the east bank of the river at this point. Its strategic importance is marked by the fact it had a castle, and up to the Civil War, a full town wall. In the Civil War itself it was a garrison town for the Royalist forces and successful survived three sieges.

The modern town is small, and has a population of about 28,000. Its principal industry is light engineering, and many people in the town commute to work in either Nottingham or Lincoln. Newark also has the highest incidence of bicycle ownership in the country.

So that's it. As a tourist guide it could have been a little longer, but there really is very little more that can be said of Newark itself. It is a small cosy little English market town which has been blessed by the fact that it isn't sufficiently remarkable to attract international attention as a tourist attraction. I'll settle for that. I moved to Newark from Birmingham in the West Midlands in about 1985 purely through choice. I had had enough of life in a major conurbation. I wanted to live somewhere where you had the space and time to do things which give quality to your life, and a town like Newark allows you to do that.

So here's some of the thoughts I have about life in Newark. Whenever I have to go to either Nottingham or Lincoln on business I go along the A46. It's a single carriageway which carries far more traffic than it was ever designed for. People are forever campaigning about turning it into a dual carriageway. I'm relieved that with a change in transport policy that's now unlikely to happen, and much of the countryside around these parts will be spared.

The original road was not designed for juggernauts, but chariots. The A46 follows the line of the Fosse Way built by the Romans, and is still called The Fosse by the locals. On a drive back you can meditate on the countless thousands who have followed this route over the last 1900 or so years. As you come over the brow of the hill at Stoke you can see over the Trent Plain the spire of St Mary Magdalene a landmark for travellers for only the last 500 years.

You pay your money and you take your choice. You can have a view of history which pigeon holes it into an interesting though mostly insignificant subject which doesn't have a great deal of bearing on your life. Alternatively you can see history as something which happens now...
and now...
and now...
and that any event once it has passed becomes a history of which you are a part.

The truth of the matter is that for much of the time people got on with their business without much notion that its consequences would be assigned historical significance.

So as you wander round Newark you may speculate that King John did not intend to die at the Castle from 'a surfeit of Lampreys'. Some have suggested that he was poisoned. He wasn't a popular king, and history has not been kind to him. The truth of the matter was that he was a more diligent and attentive monarch than his brother King Richard I who spent most of his reign abroad. It is unlikely that king or assassin spent too much time pondering about how posterity might view their actions. They just got on with it.

As did King Charles I. At the Governors House on the corner of the Market Prince Rupert attempted to confront his uncle with the reality that the Royalist cause was lost. Charles in turn accused the prince of cowardice and banished him. At the upper window of the Saracen's Head a few doors down a young William Gladstone may have aspired to a place in history when he made his first election address as a politician. It is more likely that his mind was more intent on winning the seat. At a house on the opposite corner of the Market Square Lord Byron had his first scribblings as a poet printed and published. Governor'sHouse, Saracens Head, Publishers now function as cake shop come restaurant, bank and grocers shop respectively in a town which goes about its business as a living entity rather than existing as exhibits in a museum.

Newark has given its name to fifty plus towns and cities around the world. They vary in size from Newark, New Jersey with a population of about half a million people to Newark, Northern Territory, Australia which is a sheep station. At a meeting of the Newarks of the World in 1995 at Newark, it seemed that all the delegates had a keener interest in the history of the Mother of all Newarks than the residents had themselves.

Which is why I like the place. There is a lack of self consciousness about the people of this town about its heritage which in a perverse way has helped to maintain it. It hasn't been prettified. Its kept its essential character. It has not been turned into a tourists theme park. Despite the changes of the last century the spire of St Mary Magdalene, and the bulk of the Castle are still the dominating features of the Town, and from day to day, month to month, year to year, century to century, people have got on with the business of living here.

I like it!