Linby

The Docks and the village pub

Two streams run the length of Main Street in Linby, barely six inches deep, channelling water past the golden-stone cottages on both sides. Locals call them the Docks. Nobody is entirely sure what they were built for — sheep-dipping, flood control, powering the watermills upstream — but they give the street a look no other village nearby has, and during the war a German propaganda broadcaster took them seriously enough to warn Britain that "the docks of Linby" would be bombed. The raid, when it came, missed and hit a field instead.

The Horse and Groom sits at 10 Main Street and is the only pub in the village, which nobody seems to mind. It brewed its own beer until 1921; now it pours St Austell Tribute, Timothy Taylor Golden Best and Titanic Plum Porter. Wednesday is pie night.

CAMRA rates the interior as being of Regional Importance. The 1937 rebuild survives largely intact: a smoke room under 1930s panelling, a snug behind part-glazed partitions, a lounge with parquet flooring, and a converted stable block called the Paddock Room that seats fifty for functions and dinners.

Food and the farm shop

Reviews on the food are mixed. Some diners call it "exceptional" and "very fairly priced"; one reports that out of seven meals, nobody enjoyed theirs. Dogs are welcome, there's a beer garden, and it's the starting point for the walk out to Newstead Abbey.

Brooke Farm, also on Main Street, is a farm shop and café with cakes, light lunches and vegan options, rated 4.7 on Google. It's popular enough that a table isn't guaranteed when it's busy. Plants and gifts too, dog-friendly, and enough parking for anyone driving in.

Crosses and golden stone

Behind the pub and shop, the village stretches along a green with two stone crosses. Top Cross has a seven-sided stepped pyramid base said to be unique in Britain; Puritans damaged it in 1650 and it stayed unrestored until 1869. Bottom Cross, down by the stream, carries the date 1663 and is thought to mark the Restoration of Charles II.

Travel writer Christopher Somerville called Linby "a neat, solid, stone-built village, handsome and comfortable." The cottages are built from a warm yellow stone quarried locally along Quarry Lane.

Church and railway paths

The church, St Michael's, is 13th-century with Norman work in the north wall and a 15th-century tower — one of only two Grade II* listed buildings in the parish. Its churchyard holds the graves of the "London boys," pauper apprentices sent up from workhouses to labour at Castle Mill on the Leen, where James Watt installed his first cotton-mill engine in 1785. The apprentice system that supplied them ran until 1834. Burial registers name 44 of the boys; the oldest was 23 when he died.

For walking, the 5.9-mile circuit to Newstead Abbey and back through Papplewick starts outside the Horse and Groom, following the trackbed of the old Great Northern Railway. Newstead — a ruined priory that later became Lord Byron's house — sits roughly halfway round. There's also the shorter Linby Trail, a stretch of dismantled railway open to walkers and cyclists, with views to Hucknall from the old colliery tip, now regrown into woodland.

Connections and village character

The nearest working station is Newstead, on the Robin Hood Line, roughly hourly towards Nottingham one way and Worksop and Mansfield the other. Hucknall, with its tram terminus, is a short way south-west.

In 2013 Linby was named Nottinghamshire's Best Kept Village, an award that means less than it sounds until you've seen what the streams and the stone are up against. The dogs outside the Horse and Groom don't appear to know about it either way, and carry on as before.