24th February, 2018. Gainsborough.

Recently visited Gainsborough having not been for many years. Found it very interesting. First of all visited ‘Marshall’s Yard’, a shopping complex created by adapting previously factory buildings around a works yard to retail units. Very well done, ample public seating and parking and one unit, the Laura Ashley unit, being un-ceiled allows customers to look-up and see the full height and extent of the once factory building (see picture). Marshalls were a very large Victorian engineering firm producing farm machinery for the farming industry in the steam age when metal farm tools and machinery were beginning to take over from manpower and wood. The extent of the majestic factory buildings retained with their exterior, at least, as when in production is a credit to Lincolnshire County Council and West Lindsey Council.

Then walked along the nearby River Trent embankment from the pedestrianized area to the road-bridge, past one Victorian warehouse now converted to flats (as at Brigg for example) and recently built blocks. Certain view-points inland between buildings show that much of Gainsborough was built on the Trent flood-plain, the extent of which shown by rising land about half a mile inland. Historically Gainsborough was a significant inland port and a crossing point on the River Trent. The Trent here is still tidal and Gainsborough’s trade was linked to the navigable river systems connecting to the Humber Estuary and to the national canal network during the canal age. In the day Gainsborough’s waterfront would have been a hive of activity with barges and river craft loading and unloading, while today such activity can only be imagined. Hull packet-boats, for example, regularly traded with Gainsborough.

From there visited the ‘Old Hall’ and nearby church, exterior only of both.

Finally just drove over the road bridge for a short distance only to find that were in Nottinghamshire!

(To be continued).