Tourist's guide to visit Newark-on-Trent

Visit Newark-on-Trent – things to do & explore

Overview of Newark-on-Trent history & facts by Walkfo

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Planning a visit to Newark-on-Trent?

Newark-on-Trent or Newark (/ˈnjuːərk/) is a market town and civil parish in the Newark and Sherwood district of Nottinghamshire, England. It stands on the River Trent, the A1 – the ancient Great North Road – and the East Coast Main Line railway. Its origins may be Roman, as it lies on a major Roman road, the Fosse Way. It grew up round Newark Castle, now ruined, as a centre for the wool and cloth trades. In the English Civil War, it was besieged by Parliamentary forces and relieved by Royalist forces under Prince Rupert. Newark has a market place still lined with historic buildings. It is a commuter town for Lincoln, Nottingham and even London. The district has been ranked as one of the best places to live in the UK.

Newark-on-Trent history

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Early history

The place-name Newark is first attested in the Cartulary of Eynsham Abbey in Oxfordshire, where it appears as Newercha in about 1054–1057 and Niweweorche in about 1075–1092. It appears as Newerche in the 1086 Domesday Book. The name means ‘New work’, with the apparent meaning of “New fort”. 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 CE, 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 5th to early 7th centuries has been found in Millgate, Newark, close to the Fosse Way and the River Trent. There cremated remains were buried 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).

Medieval to Stuart period

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 Stephen to establish a mint. King John died of dysentery in Newark Castle in 1216. The town became a local centre for the wool and cloth trade – by the time of Henry II a major market was held there. Wednesday and Saturday markets in the town were founded in the period 1156–1329, under a series of charters from the Bishop of Lincoln. After his death, Henry III tried to bring order to the country, but the mercenary Robert de Gaugy refused to yield Newark Castle to the Bishop of Lincoln, its rightful owner. This led to the Dauphin of France (later King Louis VIII of France) laying an eight-day siege on behalf of the king, ended by an agreement to pay the mercenary to leave. Around the time of Edward III’s death in 1377, “Poll tax records show an adult population of 1,178, excluding beggars and clergy, making Newark one of the biggest 25 or so towns in England.” In 1457 a flood swept away the bridge over the Trent. Although there was no legal requirement to do so, the Bishop of Lincoln, John Chaworth, funded a new bridge of oak with stone defensive towers at either end. In January 1571 or 1572, the composer Robert Parsons fell into the swollen River Trent at Newark and drowned. After the break with Rome in the 16th century, the establishment of the Church of England, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII had the Vicar of Newark, Henry Lytherland, executed for refusing to acknowledge the king as head of the Church. The dissolution affected Newark’s political landscape. Even more radical changes came in 1547, when the Bishop of Lincoln exchanged ownership of the town with the Crown. Newark was incorporated under an alderman and twelve assistants in 1549, and the charter was confirmed and extended by Elizabeth I. Charles I reincorporated the town under a mayor and aldermen, owing to its increasing commercial prosperity. This charter, except for a temporary surrender under James II, continued to govern the corporation until the Municipal Corporations Act 1835.

The Civil War

In the English Civil War, Newark was a Royalist stronghold, Charles I having raised his standard in nearby Nottingham. “Newark was besieged on three occasions and finally surrendered only when ordered to do so by the King after his own surrender.” It was attacked in February 1643 by two troops of horsemen, but beat them back. The town fielded at times as many as 600 soldiers, and raided Nottingham, Grantham, Northampton, Gainsborough and other places with mixed success, but enough to cause it to rise to national notice. In 1644 Newark was besieged by forces from Nottingham, Lincoln and Derby, until relieved in March by Prince Rupert. Parliament commenced a new siege towards the end of January 1645 after more raiding, but this was relieved about a month later by Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Newark cavalry fought with the king’s forces, which were decisively defeated in the Battle of Naseby, near Leicester in June 1645. The final siege began in November 1645, by which time the town’s defences had been much strengthened. Two major forts had been built just outside the town, one called the Queen’s Sconce to the south-west, and another, the King’s Sconce, to the north-east, both close to the river, with defensive walls and a water-filled ditch of 2¼ miles around the town. The King’s May 1646 order to surrender was only accepted under protest by the town’s garrison. After that, much of the defences was destroyed, including the Castle, which was left in essentially the state it can be seen today. The Queen’s Sconce was left largely untouched; its remains are in Sconce and Devon Park.

Georgian era and early 19th century

About 1770 the Great North Road around Newark (now the A616) was raised on a long series of arches to ensure it remained clear of the regular floods. A special Act of Parliament in 1773 allowed the creation of a town hall next to the Market Place. Designed by John Carr of York and completed in 1776, Newark Town Hall is now a Grade I listed building, housing a museum and art gallery. In 1775 the Duke of Newcastle, at the time the Lord of the Manor and a major landowner in the area, built a new brick bridge with stone facing to replace a dilapidated one next to the Castle. This is still one of the town’s major thoroughfares today. A noted 18th-century advocate of reform in Newark was the printer and newspaper owner Daniel Holt (1766–1799). He was imprisoned for printing a leaflet advocating parliamentary reform and for selling a pamphlet by Thomas Paine. In a milieu of parliamentary reform, the Duke of Newcastle evicted over a hundred Newark tenants whom he believed to support directly or indirectly at the 1829 elections the Liberal/Radical candidate (Wilde), rather than his candidate, (Michael Sadler, a progressive Conservative). J. S. Baxter, a schoolboy in Newark in 1830–1840, contributed to The Hungry Forties: Life under the Bread Tax (London, 1904), a book about the Corn Laws: “Chartists and rioters came from Nottingham into Newark, parading the streets with penny loaves dripped in blood carried on pikes, crying ‘Bread or blood’.”

19th–21st centuries

Many buildings and much industry appeared in the Victorian era. The buildings included the Independent Chapel (1822), Holy Trinity (1836–1837), Christ Church (1837), Castle Railway Station (1846), the Wesleyan Chapel (1846), the Corn Exchange (1848), the Methodist New Connexion Chapel (1848), W. N. Nicholson Trent Ironworks (1840s), Northgate Railway Station (1851), North End Wesleyan Chapel (1868), St Leonard’s Anglican Church (1873), the Baptist Chapel (1876), the Primitive Methodist Chapel (1878), Newark Hospital (1881), Ossington Coffee Palace (1882), Gilstrap Free Library (1883), the Market Hall (1884), the Unitarian Chapel (1884), the Fire Station (1889), the Waterworks (1898), and the School of Science and Art (1900). The Ossington Coffee Palace was built by Lady Charlotte Ossington, daughter of the 4th Duke of Portland and widow of a former Speaker of the House of Commons, Viscount Ossington. It was designed to be a Temperance alternative to pubs and coaching inns. These changes and industrial growth raised the population from under 7,000 in 1800 to over 15,000 by the end of the century. The Sherwood Avenue Drill Hall opened in 1914, as the First World War began. In the Second World War there were several RAF stations within a few miles of Newark, many holding squadrons of the Polish Air Force. A plot was set aside in Newark Cemetery for RAF burials. This is now the war graves plot, where all but ten of the 90 Commonwealth and all of the 397 Polish burials were made. The cemetery also has 49 scattered burials from the First World War. A memorial cross to the Polish airmen buried there was unveiled in 1941 by President Raczkiewicz, ex-President of the Polish Republic and head of the wartime Polish government in London, supported by Władysław Sikorski, head of the Polish Armed Forces in the West and Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile in 1939–1943. When the two died – Sikorski in 1943 and Raczkiewicz in 1947 – they were buried at the foot of the monument. Sikorski’s remains were returned to Poland in 1993, but his former grave in Newark remains as a monument. The main industries in Newark in the last hundred years have been clothing, bearings, pumps, agricultural machinery and pine furniture, and the refining of sugar. British Sugar still has one of its sugar-beet processing factories to the north of the town near the A616 (Great North Road). There have been several factory closures, especially since the 1950s. The breweries that closed in the 20th century included James Hole and Warwicks-and-Richardsons.

Newark-on-Trent culture

Newark hosts Newark Rugby Union Football Club, whose players have included Dusty Hare, John Wells, Greig Tonks and Tom Ryder. The town has a leisure centre in Bowbridge Road, opened in 2016. Newark and Sherwood Concert Band, with over 50 regular players, has performed at numerous area events in the last few years. Also based in Newark are the Royal Air Force Music Charitable Trust and Lincolnshire Chamber Orchestra. The Palace Theatre in Appletongate is Newark’s main entertainment venue, offering drama, live music, dance and film. The National Civil War Centre and Newark Museum, next to the Palace Theatre in Appletongate in the town centre, opened in 2015 to interpret Newark’s part in the English Civil War in the 17th century and explore its wider implications. The district was ranked in a survey reported in 2020 as one of the best places to live in the UK.

Newark-on-Trent geography / climate

Newark lies on 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 Newark Castle, now ruined, and a large market place now lined with historic buildings. Newark forms a single built-up area with the neighbouring parish of Balderton to the south-east. To the south, on the A46 road, is Farndon, and to the north Winthorpe. Newark’s growth and development have been enhanced by one of few bridges over the River Trent, by the navigability of the river, by the presence of the Great North Road (the A1, etc.), and later by the advance of the railways, bringing a junction between the East Coast Main Line and the Nottingham to Lincoln route. “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. The A1 bypass was opened in 1964 by the then Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples. The single-carriageway, £34 million A46 opened in October 1990.

You can visit Newark-on-Trent, COUNTY/BOROUGH & use Walkfo to discover the best walking places with our free digital tour guide app created especially for Newark-on-Trent. Walkfo Newark-on-Trent has 300 locations with history, culture & travel facts, that you can explore the same way you can a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout Newark-on-Trent, being in the moment, without digital distraction and no limitations to a specific walking route – you choose where you want to go, when you want to go and Walkfo Newark-on-Trent will keep up.

When you visit Newark-on-Trent

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When you visit Newark-on-Trent, Walkfo is your digital tour guide while exploring by foot, bike or bus. With numerous walks, hikes, tourist locations & travel destinations available in Newark-on-Trent, our travel AI guide helps you get the best from your visit to Newark-on-Trent & the surrounding areas. Our explore Newark-on-Trent app for iPhone & Android, allows you to experience the hidden history, culture and amazing facts throughout Newark-on-Trent whilst out walking. The digital tour guide creates interactive audio stories driven by where you walk, so you can exploration Newark-on-Trent’s National Heritage sites, tourist attractions, historic locations or city streets freely, without the restrictions of a predefined walk & walk map.

“The Walkfo AI has curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 0 audio facts in Newark-on-Trent alone that form an interactive Newark-on-Trent walking map for you to explore.”

Best Newark-on-Trent places to visit

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Newark-on-Trent has hundreds of places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are five of Newark-on-Trent’s best destinations to visit when exploring the area. We have condensed the information with much more detail available within Walkfo when you visit the destinations.

Visit Newark-on-Trent plaques

Experience Newark-on-Trent audio walks & tours

Visiting Newark-on-Trent with Walkfo’s things to do interactive map
The “Newark-on-Trent things to do map” below is a preview of the places you can visit in Newark-on-Trent and surrounding areas with our digital audio tour guide app. Each spot has content for a plaque, a building, a street or general area, providing history, culture or tourism information the you can explore.

Interactive ‘Explore Newark-on-Trent Map’     This Newark-on-Trent tourism map shows points of interest within a 4km radius of Newark-on-Trent centre

Walkfo App     Walkfo

Walkfo is free to download & use (for a limited time period), so if you are looking to explore Newark-on-Trent, go to your App Store to search for “Walkfo” or follow a links below and install on your mobile phone. Walkfo is designed for use with headphones or AirPods, so you can walk & explore whilst learning about the things around you without digital distraction.

  Apple App Store

  Google Play Store

Things to do & visit in Newark-on-Trent and surrounding areas

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Getting to / around Newark-on-Trent – transport links, stations, streets & traffic map

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Getting around in Newark-on-Trent using public transportation may include roads, streets, trains, undergrounds, buses or trams. Walkfo has the following important Newark-on-Trent public transport locations with historic / cultural / factual content when you visit:

Newark-on-Trent Notable Public Transport Stations		Newark-on-Trent Notable Streets & Roads

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Attention local Newark-on-Trent historians, tour guides & Newark-on-Trent tourism agents