Gainsborough () is a market town and civil parish in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The population was 20,842 at the 2011 census, and estimated at 23,243 in 2019.City Population. Retrieved 12 January 2021. It lies on the east bank of the River Trent, north-west of Lincoln, south-west of Scunthorpe, 20 miles south-east of Doncaster and east of Sheffield. It is sometimes claimed to be England's furthest-inland port.
History King Alfred, Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great The place-name Gainsborough first appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 1013 as Gegnesburh and Gæignesburh. In the Domesday Book of 1086, it appears as Gainesburg: Gegn's fortified place.Eilert Ekwall,The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, p. 191. It was one of the capital cities of Mercia in the Anglo-Saxon period that preceded Danish rule. Its choice by the Vikings as an administrative centre was influenced by its proximity to the Danish stronghold at Torksey.
In 868 King Alfred married Ealhswith (Ealswitha), daughter of Æthelred Mucel, chief of the Gaini, who lived upon the banks of the River Trent, whence the town gets its name.Ian W. Walker (2000), Mercia and the Making of England Sutton J. Charles Cox (1916), Lincolnshire p. 133; Methuen & Co. Ltd. Retrieved 23 April 2011.
Historically, Gainsborough is the "capital that never was". Towards the end of July 1013, the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard and his son and heir Cnut (Canute) arrived in Gainsborough with an army of conquest. Sweyn defeated the English opposition, and King Ethelred fled the country. Sweyn was declared King of England and returned to Gainsborough. Sweyn and Cnut took up high office at the Gainsborough Castle on the site of the present-day Old Hall, while his army occupied the camp at Thonock (now known as Castle Hills). However, Sweyn died, or perhaps was killed five weeks later in Gainsborough. His son Cnut established a base elsewhere. So Gainsborough was named as capital of England and of Denmark for five weeks in the year 1013.BBC article. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
Cnut may have performed his unsuccessful attempt to turn the tide back in the River Trent at Gainsborough. Historians believe he may have been demonstrating on the Trent Aegir, a tidal bore. He and his supporters may have known Gainsborough was the furthest reach of the aegir, and ideal for his demonstration. However, the story was only written down a century later by Henry of Huntingdon, who gives no location, and it may have been a myth or a fable.
Medieval Gainsborough The Domesday Book (1086) records that Gainsborough was a community of farmers, villeins and sokemen, tenants of Geoffrey de Guerche.
The Lindsey Survey of 1115–1118 records that Gainsborough was held by Nigel d'Aubigny, the forebear of the Mowbray family, whose interest in Gainsborough continued until at least the end of the 14th century.
A weekly market was granted by King John in 1204.
Gainsborough Old Hall Thomas Burgh acquired the manor of Gainsborough in 1455. He built Gainsborough Old Hall between 1460 and 1480, a large, 15th-century, timber-framed medieval strong house, and one of the best-preserved manor houses in Britain. It boasts a magnificent Great Hall and strong brick tower. King Richard III in 1483 and King Henry VIII in 1541 both stayed at the Old Hall. The manor was sold to the Hickman family in 1596.
English Civil War The town was garrisoned for the King in January 1643 and began cooperating with the garrison at Newark in raiding the surrounding countryside and harassing Parliamentarians there. With the Great North Road blocked to Parliamentarian traffic, Gainsborough became significant as part of a route around Newark by way of Lincoln and the line of the modern A15 road. It was in Royalist interests to obstruct this, which gave rise to battles at Gainsborough and Winceby. Parliament captured Gainsborough in the battle on 20 July, but it was immediately besieged by a large Royalist army and forced to surrender after three days.
Parliament captured Gainsborough again on 18 December 1643, but had to withdraw in March 1644, razing the town's defences to prevent their use by the enemy. The Earl of Manchester's army passed through Gainsborough in May 1644 on its way to York and the Battle of Marston Moor.
After the Civil War ended in 1645, several people in Gainsborough were fined for Royalist sympathies, including Sir Willoughby Hickman, 1st Baronet at the Old Hall, who had been created the first Baronet of Gainsborough by Charles I in 1643.John West, Oliver Cromwell and the Battle of Gainsborough (1992)
Churches The first record of a church at Gainsborough is in 1180, when the rectory there was granted by Roger de Talebu to the great Preceptory of the Knights Templar in Lindsey, at Willoughton. In 1547, following the English Reformation, the parish of Gainsborough came under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln for the first time.
The medieval Church of All Saints fell into disrepair after the Civil War. In 1736 it was demolished to make way for a new parish church completed in 1748 in a mix of perpendicular Gothic and Classical Revival styles. All that remains of the medieval church is the west tower, 90 feet high with a ring of eight bells. A monument to Richard Rollett, master sailmaker on Captain James Cook's second voyage, is located in the porch.Monument to Richard Rollett at All Saints' Church, Gainsborough. All Saints remains the main parish church of the town.
The town's rising 19th-century population called for a second church in the south of the town; Holy Trinity Church opened in 1843. This was followed by St John the Divine Church in Ashcroft Road in 1882, and St George's Church in Heapham Road in the 1950s. Holy Trinity closed in 1971 and is now the Trinity Arts Centre. St John the Divine church was closed in 2002 and it is now used for a cafe and community centre.
Non-conformism flourished in Gainsborough. It has often been claimed that some of the Mayflower Pilgrims worshipped in secret at the Old Hall before sailing for Holland to find religious freedom in 1609; no historical evidence for this has been found, whereas the congregation of John Smyth that met in the town developed into the Baptists and some returned to England. The John Robinson Memorial Church in Church Street was dedicated in 1897; the cornerstone was laid by Thomas F. Bayard, US Ambassador. Now the United Reformed Church, it was named in honour of John Robinson (1576–1625), pastor of the "Pilgrim Fathers" before they left on the Mayflower.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached in Gainsborough several times between 1759 and 1790. The town's first Methodist chapel opened in Church Lane in 1788, moving to a new site in North Street in 1804, and rebuilt there as St Stephen's in 1966. The Primitive Methodists set up in the town in 1819, with chapels in Spring Gardens (1838), Trinity Street (1877) and Ropery Road (1910). St Thomas's Church in Cross Street caters for the town's Roman Catholics.
Second World War Gainsborough suffered its only large-scale air raid of the war on the night of 10 May 1941. High-explosive bombs and incendiaries were dropped, but many fell harmlessly on the surrounding countryside. There was only minor damage in the town and no casualties.
On the night of 28–29 April 1942 a single Dornier 217 dropped a stick of bombs on the town centre, causing extensive damage and the loss of seven lives. On 31 December 1942, a RCAF Bristol Beaufighter aircraft on a training exercise crashed on Noel Street, killing both airmen and a three-year-old girl. On 22 May 1944 a RAF Spitfire fighter, in a training exercise, collided with a Wellington bomber and crashed into a Sheffield-bound goods train as it was passing over the railway bridge on Lea Road. The pilot was the only casualty.
In the early hours of 5 March 1945 a single Junkers Ju 88 fighter/bomber made a low-level attack over the town, dropping anti-personnel bombs on Church Street and the surrounding residential area. Three people died and 50 houses were damaged.Gainsborough Heritage Society Gainsborough at War 1939–1945.
New town There was a proposal to develop Gainsborough as a new town linked to Sheffield, but the plan was not pursued. New housing was instead built to the south-east of Sheffield.Clyde Binfield, The History of the City of Sheffield, 1843–1993 p. 27 (1993).
Governance
The town was before 1974 in the Gainsborough Urban District in the county of Lindsey. West Lindsey District Council was formed from five former councils. Gainsborough Town Council was established in 1992, and in the same year Gainsborough's first mayor was appointed. The council consists of four wards, Gainsborough Hill, Gainsborough North-East, Gainsborough North-West, and Gainsborough Trent, which elect a total of 18 councillors. The next municipal elections are scheduled for May 2027.
Sir Edward Leigh has been Gainsborough's Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983.
Oil In late May 1958, BP discovered oil at Corringham, causing a blow-out, then at Gainsborough in January 1959.
There were 17 drilling sites in the Gainsborough area, producing 400 barrels per day, in 1962.Times Tuesday 1 January 1963, page 15
Geography
The town is at the meeting point of the east–west A631, which crosses the Trent on Trent Bridge at the only point between the M180 and the A57), the A156 from the south to Torksey and A159 from Scunthorpe).
The dual-carriageway Thorndike Way was intended to link with the A15 at Caenby Corner; it only reaches eastward to the town boundary. It is named after the locally born actress Dame Sybil Thorndike. The former A631 through the town is now the B1433. Work on the 4km bypass was started by Tarmac in late 1972, and opened on Friday 10 May 1974.Nottingham Evening Post Saturday 11 May 1974, page 11
The civil parish extends south across rural land to Lea. The boundary passes to the south of Warren Wood, north of Lea Wood Farm, and along the northern edge of Lea Wood northwards through Bass Wood, where it meets Corringham, the main settlement to the east of Gainsborough. The boundary crosses Thorndike Way (A631) and briefly follows the B1433. At Belt Farm it meets Thonock, then follows The Belt Road, to the south of Gainsborough Golf Club, then down Thonock Hill to the edge of the Trent Valley.
George Eliot and The Mill on the Floss
Many scholars believe Gainsborough to be the basis for the fictional town of St Ogg's in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860). The novelist visited Gainsborough in 1859, staying in the house of a shipbuilder in Bridge Street, which survives today as the United Services Club. The stone bridge and the nearby willow tree are mentioned and the Old Hall is described in detail. Thomas Miller's Our Old Town published two years before, included the true story of a miller who loses a lawsuit after assaulting his adversary, and George Eliot used a similar story plot in The Mill on the Floss as the basis of the Tulliver/Wakem feud. It is also possible that she witnessed the Trent Aegir, which inspired the flood in her story's climax.
Economy Boiler-maker and ironworks Gainsborough has a long history of industry. It was the manufacturing base of Marshall, Sons & Co., a boiler-maker founded by William Marshall in 1848, who died in 1861 and was buried in the cemetery in Ropery Road. His business became one of the joint-stock companies run by his sons James and Henry. It occupied the 16-acre Britannia Ironworks, the biggest in Europe when built. Marshall's Works' steam engines were sold worldwide until it closed in the 1980s. The site is now split among various companies. Tesco in Beaumont Street and Dransfield's occupy about nine acres; the remainder is held by local companies.
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