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The Town of Tickhill
with Stu Charmak
 Imposing in stature and imperious in its stance as it overlooks the town of Tickhill, the Parish Church of St. Mary is a magnificent edifice. Declared by Pevsner to be "the proudest parish church in the West Riding, except for those of the big towns," it is actually larger than many in those towns. Its origins are in the 12th Century while most of what is visible was done in the 1300 and 1400s. In those centuries clerestory windows above the nave arcades and another large window over the chancel let in new light.
The original tower was raised during this time in the Perpendicular style to a splendid 120 feet, surmounted by a stone crown and it is this which dominates the townscape no matter from which direction it is approached. Two of the statues in the niches round the tower are of Edward III and his queen, and a third is of Christ in Glory. Inside there are remains of medieval stained glass as well as a 15th Century font and a 16th century Holy Table.
In the cemetery an old, pertinent weeping willow tree stands silent guard over graves. These extend all round the church and go back at least 250 years. The structure of the church itself has seen repair over the years with obvious newer pieces of sandstone here and there. A neat more modern-looking touch is the blue and gold vertical sundial placed above the north door. However, a lot more needs to be done as is the way with 700 year old churches! To address this a Heritage Appeal has been started supported by English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and donations are being sought in order to maintain this historic Grade One Listed Building. Along with the physical history, records of baptisms, marriages and burials from the early 1500s onwards are still available at Doncaster Archives.
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 Down the street from the church is the modern Tickhill Scout and Guide building, next to a well-kept children's play area complete with swings and climbing frames. Across the road a free car park gives on to St. Mary's Court which contains a range of boutique-type shops, as does Buttercross Court further along Market Place. There are a goodly number of hostelries providing drinks and food during the day, and if you are out at night there is the Castlegates Restaurant, the Red Lion, Zara's and the Taj Cottage.
The Buttercross itself stands at the convergence of three major roads, one to Rotherham, one to Doncaster and the third to Bawtry, and is a unique local landmark. Built in 1776, it has five steps and eight pillars supporting a dome and gained its name by providing shelter for the butter sellers who congregated here, because medieval Tickhill was an important trading centre, being close to Sandbeck Park, the ancestral home of the Earls of Scarbrough, and not far from the Great North Road, originally fashioned by the Romans, which runs through that other nearby town of note and style, Bawtry. Beside the Buttercross is the parish pump with a date of 1897, celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Tickhill has certain royalist leanings as a large metal plaque set in a piece of stone titled "Historic Tickhill", a stone's throw away, commemorates the Golden Jubilee of the present monarch with reliefs of the historic buildings in the town.
Historically Tickhill was important enough to be named one of the wapentakes of the West Riding of Yorkshire. A wapentake was a division of land thought capable of supporting a hundred families. The town was also notable enough in the late 13th Century to be invited to send representatives to Parliament. By the mid-1300s it was the second wealthiest settlement in the south of Yorkshire and was one of the West Riding's leading wool producing centres. As an example of its relative size, in the late 14th Century Tickhill had 461 taxpaying residents while Doncaster's total was 756. Nowadays, despite being absorbed into the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster in 1974, Tickhill retains a certain amount of autonomy with its own mayor and town council.
Tickhill is a hive of lively, social activities which include athletics, badminton, netball and tennis clubs, a male voice choir, a folk club, local history and horticultural societies and monthly meetings for language enthusiasts through Les Francophiles de Tickhill and Voglia d'Italia. Most of these have notices on the message board inside the public library which was fully refurbished as recently as 1996. This is small but well-laid out, light, airy and quiet. Besides books it now has CDs and DVDs to borrow, plus the obligatory computer terminals.
The site for the library was donated to Tickhill in the will of Mr. Henry Shaw, who died in October 1906. In it he gave permission for buildings that he owned to be demolished and for a library to be erected on the site for the use of the townspeople within three years of his demise. One of the provisions of this gift was that the library should be surmounted by a tower with two clock faces. This is still in evidence, 100 years on and still keeping reasonable time, with a weathervane to top it off.
 Crossing over the Buttercross and into Northgate an even older building confronts us. Now known as the Parish Rooms, it was originally built in the 15th Century as St. Leonard's Hospital and cared for lepers. Its striking plaster and timber front was refurbished, according to an inscription, in 1851 and further work was done last year. The oak pillars are cracked and worn but still retain their sturdiness. They are topped with Tudor or Yorkshire roses and small carved gargoyles. There are nine pillars, only one of which has had to have its lower part and stone base replaced.
Round the corner in Sunderland Street, so called because it was sundered by the town's medieval defensive ditch, there are more independent shops, the Scarbrough Arms and the Evangelical Church. Encased in the wall of one of the shops is a postbox and two postage stamp dispensers, now no longer in use, witness to a bygone age. Further along it appears that superstitions were rife at some time as there is a pair of joined cottages bearing the numbers 11 and 15. There are also two houses along Castlegate with the same numbering.
Castlegate inevitably leads towards the remains of Tickhill Castle. Apparently originally called Blyth Castle the origin of the name Tickhill is shrouded in mystery. There was a settlement in the area known as Dadesley previous to the Norman Conquest, but it is Tickhill in the annals of Nostell Priory in 1109 to 1119. The most probable reason is it was named after a local person of note called Tica who owned the knoll on which the motte of the castle was built, hence Tica's hill. The manor of Tickhill, among 49 others in Yorkshire, was given to Roger de Busili by William I in gratitude for his support. As suits his name, Roger was a busy man, co-founding Roche Abbey with Richard Fitzturgis and then erecting the motte and bailey castle at Tickhill. This was a grand affair boasting an elaborate eleven-sided keep with projecting buttresses, a barbican and a large gatehouse which had an upper storey and a canopied fireplace added in Tudor times. It is one of the oldest surviving Norman gatehouses in England.
 Unlike nearby Conisbrough Castle, Tickhill Castle had an eventful history. Between 1102 and 1322 it was subject to four sieges. The Conqueror's second son, Henry I and subsequently Henry II, husband of Eleanor of Acquitaine, both took possession of it and Prince John held it against his brother Richard the Lionheart on his return from the Crusades in 1194. It was the site of a three week siege in 1322 during the political conflicts Edward II had with his barons. Tickhill Castle's final moments came during the English Civil War. It was held by the royalists for Charles I, but after the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, royalist forces abandoned the North of England and Tickhill Castlke fell to Cromwell. It was disabled and then demolished in 1649.
A private residence is now on the site, atop the sandstone knoll, and is owned by the Duchy of Lancaster. Remains of the Norman curtain wall are still in evidence as are defensive ditches and the majority of the moat. Across the road is another body of water known as the Mill Dam which is a pond formed by the diversion of Paper Mill Dike. Thanks to the Friends of the Mill Dam and the Mill Dam Improvement Group, this has become a haven for mallard, moorhen, kingfisher, heron and other wildlife. At one end of the pond is the old water mill, the best preserved in the area. At the other is a small 13th century clapper bridge made from a single block of locally quarried Magnesian Limestone.
 It was a warm spring afternoon when we were in Tickhill so we made our way to the bridge, which was repaired in the 19th Century with two brick arches. As we looked out over the stream a squabble broke out involving two mallards and a moorhen. it looked as though there was a moorhen nest in the wall bordering the stream behind some overhanging branches. Suddenly out from under the bridge, directly below our feet, streaked a large pure white duck. He was paddling ten to the dozen and headed straight for the fracas.
Patrolman Duck had arrived. He broke up the melee and then came gently alongside the moorhen while the two mallards sat on the other side of the stream with their backs to the bank, looking very sheepish and pretending that it was nothing to do with them. Patrolman Duck then spent a little time cruising up and down the stream keeping his beady eyes on the two miscreants. It was a wonderful natural climax to our day in Tickhill.
We wandered back to the centre, pausing to smile at a leaded window in the Carpenter's Arms with the inlaid but now inappropriate legend, 'Smoke Room'. We looked in at the shops en route and reflected that Tickhill holds together an attractive blend of themes, ancient and modern, natural and human-made. It embraces modern life with enthusiasm while building on its fascinating and eventful past, and long may that continue.
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