Newark on Trent

Sister cities

• Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire
• Emmendingen
• Sandomierz

History

The town's origins are likely to be Roman, as it lies on a major Roman road, the Fosse Way. It grew up around Newark Castle and St Mary Magdalene church; it was later developed as a centre for the wool and cloth trades. The origins of the town are possibly Roman, from its position on an important Roman road, the Fosse Way. In a document which purports to be a charter of 664 AD, Newark is mentioned as having been granted to the Abbey of Peterborough by King Wulfhere of Mercia. An Anglo-Saxon pagan cemetery used from the early fifth to early seventh centuries has been found in Millgate, close to the Fosse Way and the river Trent; cremated remains were buried there in pottery urns. In the reign of Edward the Confessor, Newark belonged to Godiva and her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who granted it to Stow Minster in 1055. After the Norman Conquest, Stow Minster retained the revenues of Newark, but it came under the control of the Norman Bishop Remigius de Fécamp, after whose death control passed to the Bishops of Lincoln from 1092 until the reign of Edward VI. There were burgesses in Newark at the time of the Domesday survey. The reign of Edward III shows evidence that it had long been a borough by prescription. The Newark wapentake (hundred) in the east of Nottinghamshire was established in the period of Anglo-Saxon rule (10th–11th centuries). Newark Castle was originally a fortified manor house founded by the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Elder. In 1073, Remigius de Fécamp, Bishop of Lincoln, put up an earthwork motte-and-bailey fortress on the site. The river bridge was built about this time under a charter from Henry I, as was St Leonard's Hospital. The bishopric also gained from the king a charter to hold a five-day fair at the castle each year, and under King…

Geography

By road, Newark is from Nottingham, from Lincoln and from Leicester. Locally, the town lies from Bingham, from Grantham, from Mansfield, from Retford, from Sleaford and from Southwell. Newark lies on the bank of the river Trent, with the river Devon running as a tributary through the town. Standing at the intersection of the Great North Road and the Fosse Way, Newark originally grew around the castle, now ruined, and a large market place now lined with historic buildings. It forms a single built-up area with the neighbouring parish of Balderton to the south-east; Farndon lies to the south, on the A46 road, and Winthorpe is to the north. Newark's growth and development have been enhanced by one of few bridges over the Trent, by the navigability of the river, by the presence of the Great North Road and later by the advance of the railways, bringing a junction between the East Coast Main Line and the Nottingham to Lincoln line. "Newark became a substantial inland port, particularly for the wool trade," though it industrialised somewhat in the Victorian era and later had an ironworks, engineering, brewing and a sugar refinery.