Egmanton

The last pub and the missing shop

The sign outside the Old Plough Inn on Main Street doesn't need to mention Egmanton's other two pubs, because neither has existed since 1880. The New Plough and the Rose and Crown are gone; the Old Plough closed briefly too, in early 2024, before John and Lisa Gregory bought it and reopened. John is head chef, classically trained to rosette standard, with more than 25 years behind him: beef steak and Guinness pie under a puff pastry lid with hand-cut chips, an 8oz fillet steak burger with Poacher cheddar, baby gem and bacon. Sunday roast runs midday to six; lunch is Wednesday to Saturday. One TripAdvisor reviewer called it "the best Sunday dinner I have had in a long time." Dogs are welcome in the beer garden, where Black Sheep Best Bitter is on the pumps. Until the early 1980s the Old Plough incorporated the village shop, the last one Egmanton had.

There's no shop in Egmanton now. For that you walk a mile north to Tuxford, where Delish Farm Shop and Deli and Greens & Deli — a café and bistro doing sausage rolls and a Sunday carvery — cover most of what you'd want, along with the A1 junction and the buses. A mile south is Laxton, which still farms three great open fields in narrow medieval strips, the last village in England to do so, overseen every November by a Court Leet jury. The Dovecote Inn there doubles as the visitor centre, with four dining areas and a changing list of real ales.

A Victorian church with a medieval memory

Egmanton's own set piece is the church. St Mary's looks largely Victorian outside — most of the fabric is, after an 1896–98 rebuilding paid for by the 7th Duke of Newcastle — but the tower is 15th century, with Norman stonework underneath it all. On the north wall of the chancel is the Shrine of Our Lady of Egmanton, designed by Ninian Comper: a gilded Virgin and Child on a painted bracket, ringed by a garland of red and white roses. The medieval original was destroyed in the Reformation in 1547 and stayed that way until 1929, when the first organised Easter pilgrimage in centuries drew visitors from Leicester, Leeds, Sheffield and Lincoln. The Society of Our Lady of Egmanton still runs three a year, opening with a Pilgrim Mass at noon. Pilgrims' crosses scratched into the stone of the south door by medieval visitors are still there to find.

The Norman mound behind the village

Behind the village, Gaddick Hill rises 14 metres — the motte of a castle built by Roger de Busli shortly after 1066, one of the best-preserved in Nottinghamshire, now a mound with a farm on the old bailey. Domesday valued the whole place at £4, unchanged from 1066.

Paths to Laxton and Moorhouse

Walks go in most directions: a circular route to Laxton and back is just under eight miles of footpaths and lanes past open farmland, and Walk 55 on the Farnsfield Walks blog links Egmanton, Laxton and Moorhouse along the edge of Egmanton Wood. Buses are Nottsbus On Demand, a bookable minibus reached by app, or the 37 from Tuxford to Retford and Newark.

The banner waiting for pilgrimage

In 1930 the Reverend Alfred Hope Patten, who had restored the shrine at Walsingham, visited Egmanton and left a banner as a gift. It's still kept at the church, in a village of under 300 people, folded away until the next pilgrimage needs it.