Town in Nottinghamshire, England

Newark-on-Trent

A king died here, a poet-in-the-making got into print here, and the town once made its own emergency money from cut-up silver plate during a siege.

Key information

County: Nottinghamshire
Nation: England
Known for: Civil War sieges, Newark Castle, the National Civil War Centre, antiques fairs
Famous people: King John (died here in 1216), Lord Byron (first books printed here), Prince Rupert

About Newark-on-Trent

The town where King John died

In October 1216, King John, worn out by a civil war and a bout of dysentery, arrived at Newark Castle and never left. He died there on the night of 18–19 October, only a year after sealing Magna Carta. The castle he died in was already almost a century old. Bishop Alexander of Lincoln built the stone fortress in the 1130s to guard a vital river crossing. Its riverside gatehouse and long curtain wall still look out over the Trent.

Three sieges and a very stubborn garrison

Newark picked the King's side in the Civil War, and paid for it. Because the Great North Road and the Trent crossing met here, the town became the Royalists' fortress in the East Midlands, ringed with new earthwork defences. Parliament's forces besieged it three times between 1643 and 1646. In March 1644 Prince Rupert marched in and relieved the town, one of the great Royalist rescues of the war. The last siege dragged on for months. In May 1646 Charles I gave himself up to the Scottish army camped outside the town and ordered the garrison to surrender. Parliament then had the castle slighted, which is why it is a picturesque ruin rather than a fortress. The Queen's Sconce, a huge star-shaped Civil War earthwork on the edge of town, survives as a reminder.

The money cut from silver plate

When Newark was running short of cash during the last siege, the garrison made its own. Silver plate was cut into rough lozenge-shaped pieces and stamped with their value in pence. These siege coins are now collectors' treasures. Their story is a centrepiece of the National Civil War Centre, which opened in 2015 in the Old Magnus Building, a former grammar school founded in 1529.

A spire, a square and a poet's first book

St Mary Magdalene church rises above the rooftops with a spire of about 236 feet, a landmark you can see from far across the Trent valley. Beside it, the cobbled Market Place is lined with old inns and fronted by the elegant Town Hall, designed by John Carr of York and completed in 1776. The town also has a literary footnote. A teenage Lord Byron, whose mother lived at nearby Southwell, had his first poems printed by Newark printers S. and J. Ridge. The 1806 volume Fugitive Pieces, and 1807's Hours of Idleness, were produced here, before he swapped Nottinghamshire for fame.

Crossroads of everything

Newark has always been somewhere that routes cross. The Roman Fosse Way meets the line of the Great North Road nearby, the Trent gave the town a river port, and the railways followed. Just outside town, the East Coast Main Line crosses the Nottingham–Lincoln line on the level, a rare flat crossing of two main routes. The river and the surrounding barley fields also made Newark a big malting and brewing town in the 19th century, and the old maltings still shape parts of its skyline. Today that crossroads role shows in other ways. Newark Showground hosts huge antiques and collectors' fairs, and the Newark Air Museum near Winthorpe fills hangars with cold-war jets and bombers. Both draw visitors from well beyond Nottinghamshire.