Surroundings

Places to Visit in the Region Around Scrooby

Scrooby will probably only take an hour or two of your time, so here are some recommendations for places to visit in the region around Scrooby.

Close to Scrooby

The best way to see the landscape around Scrooby is to walk. That said, we are a bit short of footpaths and you may have to walk alongside the main road for a short stretch.

Scrooby Quarry

The local 'round the block' walk takes you south out of the village along Low Road and around the disused quarry to the immediate south of the houses.

The last house in the village on the west side of Low Road is the old George and Dragon pub, now a bed and breakfast. The pub consisted of a single small room with a bench. Beer was served through a hatch in the wall from the private part of the house. The pub closed in the 1960s.

A short section of pavement next to the main road extends between Low Road and the Old Schoolhouse on the west of the main road. Like the George and Dragon pub, the school passed out of use in the 1960s. The last headmaster, Mr Crookes, opened the new school at Ranskill, which still teaches children from Scrooby, Serlby, Ranskill and Torworth.

The quarry is behind the old school house. The rough grassland which now covers the site of the quarry is a favourite hunting ground for barn owls. At dusk the owls hunt over the grass pastures which surround the village. Standing on the slight hill (an old spoil heap) at the edge of the quarry, the owls can be overlooked on the wing.

Scrooby Quarry at dusk, 17 June 2008

When flooded, the quarry is patrolled by moorhens, coots, geese, ducks and swans. Their nests are secreted away in the silver birch undergrowth.

Along the southern boundary of the quarry is a disused branch line railway. The line connected the coal pit at Harworth and Bircotes with the main railway network. The railway cutting is now maintained with wood shavings and cinder, and used by the Balding family to train race horses.

Foxgloves at Scrooby Quarry, 17 June 2008

The eastern boundary of the quarry is formed by the East Coast Mainline railway. The electric trains thunder by at over 100 mph. A ruined red brick railway engineer's shed can be seen next to the lines at the south of the quarry.

The railway can be crossed at the north-eastern corner of the quarry. A footpath runs northward alongside the railway lines for a few hundred metres to the site of the old Scrooby station. Crossing the lines again on the level crossing brings you back into the village, passing the site of the manor house on the north of Station Road.

Green Lane and Roman Bank

A little to the south of Scrooby, running westward from the main road is Green Lane. This track is a relict of the old communal agriculture practiced through the Medieval period until Enclosure in 1777. The track was the main foot, horse and cart path for Scrooby villagers with land strips to cultivate in the old open fields named Middle Field, and Farr Field.

The way cuts westward over Backwith Hill, the soil gets sandier and loser the higher it climbs. Gaining the top of the hill gives a good view of the Scrooby region, with Barrow Hills on the horizon, the village and church before you, and the Serlby estate to the west.

From the high ground, Green Lane continues westward, down the back side of Backwith Hill into a low lying riverside pasture landscape known as Goal Butts in the Eighteenth Century. The track dog-legs to the south and runs alongside Roman Bank. This is a wide linear earth bank which may have delimited the western extent of the Tenth Century Saxon estate of Sutton and Scrooby, or it may have been constructed by Matilda de Mules around 1199; she was granted the right to ‘have a ditch cut between her wood of Serlby and the field’.

Backwith Hill, Scrooby, and the low lying pasture of Goal Butts, 16 May 2008

The whole landscape to the west of the track is estate land surrounding the Georgian Serlby Hall. At the junction of the track with the road, the old lodge can be seen; now a part of the clubhouse of Serlby golf club. The track continues south for a few miles through woodland which is at its best in late April and early May when the blue bells are out. The earthern bank continues to run parallel with the track; sometimehigh and wide, sometimes low and hardly visible. The southern length of the track also runs parallel with a drive into the Serlby estate, and a limestone-built lodge marks the junction of the estate drive with the public road. This is also the end of the footpath.

Hawthorn Blossom on Backwith Hill, Scrooby, 16 May 2008

Gale Carr Drain, Scrooby

Graham Robbins

Gale Carr Drain cuts though the low-lying land to the east of Scrooby. The drain runs for around 3km from the back of Ranskill, passed Mattersey Wood, the railway level crossing and Scaftworth. The ditch drains the wet peaty land, taking water northward to the River Idle.

The surrounding land was a common until 1777, when it was abolished by Scrooby's Enclosure Act. The common was used by Scrooby's inhabitants for grazing animals, collecting fire wood and foraging for wild food. The area between Gale Carr Drain and the River Idle as it passes Scaftworth was called Ing's Meadow in the Eighteenth Century.

This land now feels disconnected from the village. It has been severed by the East Coast Mainline railway.

Water birds are often here. During February 2008 a group of around 20 swans camped for some weeks on the wet fields by the River Idle.

Scaftworth

Barrow Hills and Harwell Woods

SSSI

Jane Hamlyns Pottery, Everton

See the website of this world-renown saltglaze potter. Jane Hamlyn's pottery is a couple of miles away from Scrooby, in Everton.

Drakeholes

Pub, view, Eighteenth Century landscape

Heading South from Scrooby

Retford Farmer's Market

Third Saturday of every month.

Thaymar Ice Cream

Clumber Park

Sherwood Forest

Southwell

Heading East from Scrooby

Lincoln

Cathedral, castle, shops, Wig & Mitre.

Heading West from Scrooby

Sheffield