A Portrait of Blyth

Blyth Priory and Church

Blyth is known for providing food and accommodation for travellers and tourists and this has been the story of Blyth for over 900 years.  The village grew up around the Benedictine Priory which was founded in 1088 by Sir Roger de Builli of Tickhill.
The central nave of the church has changed very little since it was built.  It is the oldest Norman building in Nottinghamshire and is a splendid example of Norman workmanship.  Sir Roger’s architect, it is supposed, brought the plans from Jumièges in Normandy (the great ruined abbey by the River Seine, which claims to be the first medieval site to become a tourist attraction after the French revolution).  The Priory at Blyth, built of magnesian limestone called Roche Abbey stone which glints warmly in the sunshine, was dedicated to Our Lady and placed in the care of Benedictine Monks from Rouen.  The successive Priors thus became the Lords of the Manor of Blyth, and each was an excellent overlord, being honest, diligent and clever.
The Priory was privileged to take tolls on all the roads leading to Blyth.  Records remain of the charges they made for all the goods carried along these roads.  Merchants and travellers in return found these roads and pathways well maintained and safe.  They also found somewhere to stay in Blyth as the monastic rule of Saint Benedict required that the gatehouse of the Priory should provide shelter and food for all who asked.

Tournaments

In the twelfth century, the Angel Inn was founded probably as an extension to the Gatehouse.  This was a prosperous time.  In 1232, King Henry III granted to the Priory the right to permit tournaments on the meadows between Blyth and Styrrup.  Noblemen came from all over the land to meet at Tickhill or Blyth and take part in the jousting.  Many sent their squires in their stead to compete in their colours.  This involved military discipline and practice for real warfare.  These tournaments were tremendous events, attracting competitors, spectators, servants and caterers, who brought trade to Blyth and news of the outside world.
This was also the period of the Crusades when, sadly, pilgrims and soldiers returning from the Middle East brought with them the disease of leprosy.  In 1215, the pious William Cressy of Hodsock founded a hospital to accommodate these unfortunate people.  This building still remains at the southern end of the village green.  For centuries it served as the village school in the care of the church; during the Second World War it served as a canteen and rest room for the soldiers camped in Blyth Hall Park; then forty years ago it was converted into two flats.

Travellers’ Delight

Blyth being on a branch of the Great North Road between London and Scotland is mentioned in the journals of several famous travellers.  Robin Hood slept here on his way to meet the Potter of Wakefield.  In 1274, Robert de Insila, the newly elected Bishop of Durham, was pleased with the service he received at the Angel.  John Layland, the scholarly map-maker of Henry VIII’s time, reported “the name of Blyth well suited the mirth and good fellowship of the inhabitants therein”.  Much later, in the time of William and Mary, the traveller Celia Fiennes enjoyed her visit to Blyth Hall, which by then had replaced the Priory.

New Lords of the Manor and the ‘Doom painting’

By about 1400, the great days of the Priory were over; England was at war with France, so the Priory with its connections with Rouen was taken into the King’s hands.  The Lordships of the Manor of Blyth passed to the aristocratic family of Clifton of Clifton, near Nottingham and Hodsock.  It was one Sir Gervase Clifton who, when the Priory and Parish church was separated, had the glorious perpendicular tower built, the south aisle extended and the roof of the Norman nave taken to its present height of sixty feet.  A wall was built to keep the Priory and parish church apart, and on the wall was painted the great scene of the Day of Judgement, the most spectacular of its kind in the North of England.
At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII (1538), the great painting was whitewashed over and it remained hidden for 450 years.  In 1986 – during the preparations for the ‘Blyth 900’ celebrations of 1988 – the painting was re-discovered and the work of cleaning and revealing began.  Booklets about the ‘Doom painting’ and leaflets on the history of the church are available on the Church bookstall.  Visitors will also see a list of the Priors and Vicars of Blyth, compiled and painted to Mark the ninth centenary.

Village hostelries

At the crossroads in front of the church is the wooden sign, designed by Nigel Edwards and carved by Tom Rennocks, with reminders of the village history.  Behind this sign is the rising ground called Market Hill where markets and fairs have been held since the time of Edward III.  Within living memory, pedlars and travelling entertainers have set up there.  Around the crossroads stand several inns, the Red Hart, the Fourways (formerly the Post House and Sheffield House), and the Angel Inn; around the corner is the Indian restaurant, which used to be the Oddfellows, and just up the road are The Rose and Crown and The White House, and on the village green, there is the White Swan; all of these date back to the eighteenth century, the heyday of stagecoach travel, when Blyth had its own breweries and candle makers.  The White Swan still sells ale, but the Rose and Crown and the White House are now private houses.

Blyth Hall and the Mellish era

In the eighteenth century, there were visitors of great distinction, for many notable men and women came to Blyth Hall, which was built long after the dissolution of the Priory on the site of the Prior’s lodging.
The lovely grounds were created where the other monastic buildings had been.  It was a splendid house, built in 1690 in the newly-fashioned red brick.  The brick was brought from Carlton-in-Lindrick by a carrier named Seaton, hardworking and prosperous, who built the cottages and little chapel at the corner of Oldcotes Road.  The chapel is also now a private house and members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) met here until more recent times.  Seaton had his differences with Edward Mellish, the owner of the Hall (whose statue lies in Blyth Church).  The trouble arose over Mellish’s re-planning of the road to Oldcotes so that it skirted the new Park instead of crossing it.
As the Hall was very close to the Church, it actually took its water supply from the church roof, and it was stored in a tank below the north wall of the church.  When other water supplies were made available, the tank was forgotten until the source of dampness in the North aisle had to be dealt with.  The great arch at the end of the Monastic nave was also incorporated into the design of the Hall, and it became an aviary housing exotic birds, with the Mellish family vault deep below it.
Edward Mellish’s nephew, William, was the Member of Parliament for East Retford, and he married Kitty Real, the first Jewish woman to enter the English aristocracy.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the Mellish family improved and expanded Blyth; red brick cottages surrounded the village green, five splendid farms were built with dovecotes, and a lake was constructed which stretched between the present New Bridge, near the Charnwood Hotel, to Nornay.  William Mellish’s friend, Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist, who travelled with Captain Cook, brought specimens of foreign trees and plants to Blyth Hall including the characteristic acacia or robinia.  Over the years, new acacias have been planted on Market Hill.
The Mellish era ended in the time of William’s grandson, Henry Francis Mellish.  This gentleman was a scholar of distinction and a brilliant soldier.  He was also a friend of the Prince Regent and a notorious gambler.  The loss of Blyth Hall is said to have occurred after Doncaster races when the Prince and his friends visited Blyth.  A good deal of folklore surrounds the actual scene but some say that a game of cards deteriorated into a race between two cockroaches on which Mellish gambled away the whole estate.

Hodsock Priory

Henry Mellish returned to the army and served under the Duke of Wellington before settling down, still a bachelor, at Hodsock Priory.
Hodsock at that time was a good farm with a Tudor gatehouse and a moat of great antiquity.  The Mellish family re-built the house in splendid Victorian Gothic style and gave it the Romantic name of ‘Priory’.  The present inheritors of Hodsock Estate, Sir Andrew and Lady Buchanan, open their gardens to the public frequently throughout the year from the first snowdrops to the last roses.

The modern-day Blyth estate

The Blyth estate was purchased by Joshua Walker of the iron founding family of Rotherham.  The lifetimes of Joshua Walker and his son span most of the nineteenth century.  During that time, English agriculture was at a low ebb and the poverty which afflicted the people reached the Hall.  Mrs Walker, who in her youth had given the village a girls school (the building at the Worksop Road junction which is now the dental practice), faded into notorious parsimony as ‘Ellen of Pork Hall’. 
During this period, however, the vicar from 1834 to 1874 was the great John Raine, a famous scholar and a thorough and diligent antiquarian and author whose ‘History of Blyth’ published in 1860 is a model for all village historians.  He gathered together all that was then known of the village past and gave Blyth a pride in its history which it has never lost.
It was at this time that Methodism came to Blyth and an attractive meeting house was built on land given by the Squire, now known as the old hall.  This was replaced early in the twentieth century by the chapel on the main road next to the Memorial Hall, which has now been converted into a private residence.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the last Squire came to Blyth Hall from Bradford where he was a wool merchant.  He was ambitious to run Blyth as the ideal estate village.  The gardens around the Hall were magnificently restored and the cricket field created in the park.  Tenants were trained to play so they could make a team with Mr Francis Willey’s guests.  Once a year, Blyth show was held in the park and the Hall grounds were open to the public with boat trips round the lake.  The show, which had begun as a pastime for the village men in a field behind the Angel, expanded into the popular one-day event which many people still remember.  Blyth Agricultural, Horticultural and Athletic Show flourished until the 1960s when a series of wet summers washed out a favourite event.

Barnby Memorial Hall

The Squire’s son served in the First World War.  Upon his return his father, soon to become ennobled as Baron Barnby of Blyth, had the Memorial Hall built in thanksgiving for his son’s safe return and in memory of those who had given their lives in the conflict.  The Memorial Hall was a gift to the village
One day in the 1960s when the Hall had just been restored and modernised and given its present name of The Barnby Memorial Hall, the second Lord Barnby came and spoke – particularly to the children, so that they could tell their children.  He said that on August 7th 1897, his cousin, Claude Grahame White, drove the first motor car into Blyth.  He and his brother Monty took it in turns to drive from Bedford and to carry the red flag in front.  He also said that when he came to Blyth as a small boy the old gardener had said to him: “We had great times here when the Prince Regent came”.

Visitors to Blyth – the tradition continues

In the nineteenth century, the railways came to Retford and Worksop, and visitors of another sort came to Blyth.  People began to take holidays, and Blyth became a resort for holidaymakers from urban Rotherham and Sheffield.  With the invention of the bicycle and wagonettes, more people came and by the beginning of the twentieth century, there were at least five houses accommodating cyclists and day-trippers.
Much later, visitors still came to Blyth for the Bank Holiday markets and Blyth in Bloom, when Blyth took part in, and often, won the ‘best kept village’ competition.
Today, Blyth still attracts lots of visitors who visit Hodsock Priory for the snowdrops and the church for its historic architecture and the ‘Doom painting’, good food in the local hostelries, and the many events that take place in the Memorial Hall.