Martyn's Blog

As I approach the end of three weeks holiday from work, I thought I would tick off another station on the list by visiting Newark Castle station in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire.

The journey started at the beating heart of Burton on Trent’s transport network, the railway station. It was a cloudy and foggy Autumn morning as I boarded the train that would take me to Nottingham, where I would change for Newark Castle.

Newark Castle is the eastern terminus of the route that goes from Matlock in Derbyshire and passes through Derby and Nottingham. I have previously been to most of the stations on the Derby side of the route (the Derwent Valley line), but none of them on the Nottingham side. I didn’t have a long wait at Nottingham for my train, but it departed from an uncovered platform, and it had just started to rain.

The train departed from Nottingham a couple of minutes late. It made up the time on the way to Newark as it passed through the drizzle-soaked Nottinghamshire countryside, though. I passed several stations still on my list to visit, as a sort of sneak preview of what I have in store. There is one station in particular that I will be putting near the top of the list of stations to visit. I won’t give anything away, but it looked so intriguing from the train.

Just after quarter past eleven, the train steamed, (actually, it more like “rattled”) into Newark Castle station. Although the service I travelled on terminates at Newark Castle, the line goes on towards Lincoln. Newark is served by two stations, the other being Newark Northgate, but that isn’t on my list of stations to visit.

Newark Castle railway station was opened in August 1846. It is a pretty looking Grade II listed station, with many facilities such as a waiting room, toilets and a ticket office. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a picture of the station. There is also a signal box next to the station, and a level crossing which I needed to traverse in order to get to Newark town centre. I hate level crossings, but I crossed this one with no problems.

On arrival in Newark, I headed for the town centre to have a look around the shops and the old market place. I had a stroll around the gardens of the St Mary Magdalene church.

From there, I went back to the castle to have a look around the grounds and the castle itself. Newark Castle was built in the 12th Century. Like Edinburgh Castle, it was built close to a railway station, which is quite handy. It was at Newark Castle that King John died in 1216 after a feast, having eaten “a surfeit of peaches”. What a way to go. In 1648, it was ordered to be “slighted” or destroyed, although they obviously only did half a job, because some of it is still there. In the 19th century, some of the castle ruins were restored, and the site is now a Grade I listed building.

The River Trent runs by the castle, so I took a walk over a bridge to the small park by the river.

By this time, it was raining quite heavily, my feet were wet and I was tired, so I decided to head home. It was a five minute walk from the park to the station, and my train was sitting at the platform, so I boarded it and headed for Nottingham, from where I got the train home. Station number 26 of 76 has been done. There’s more to come soon, and thanks for reading.