A captured Russian cannon sits in Cannon Square, opposite the church, with a plaque calling it "The Earl of Aberdeen." Taken at the Siege of Sevastopol, it arrived by rail in 1858. During the Second World War it was removed, then rescued by an Alderman called Bradshaw and put back up in 1950. It sits there now as if none of that happened.
A short walk away, in the Market Square, is the Broad Stone, a low block in front of the Town Hall with a worn hollow on top. The story is that during plague outbreaks, coins were dipped in vinegar and left there so infected money could change hands without touching anyone. It's more likely the base of an old boundary cross, but the vinegar story is the one that survives.
The square itself is broad enough that Bill Bryson called it "exceptionally large and handsome." Georgian townhouses line Grove Street, and the market runs there every Thursday and Saturday.
For lunch, the King and Miller does a hand-battered fish fillet with chips, peas and tartare sauce, burgers called the Sticky Pig and the K-Pop Crunch, and sizzling skillets of Moroccan-style chicken or chicken katsu, finishing with a Berry Mess Sundae. It's popular enough that thirty-to-forty-minute waits aren't unusual when it's busy.
The Idle Valley Tap, on Carolgate, is a Grade II listed micropub, formerly The Anchor Inn, stone-flagged, with a pool table, a dart board and eight real ales on at any time, including its own Idle Valley Pale and Red. Dogs and children are welcome, and CAMRA members get 10p off.
The Black Boy Inn on Moorgate is in the Good Beer Guide, pouring from an L-shaped three-handpump counter. The Turks Head on Grove Street keeps its original 1930s fireplaces and one of the few surviving games of Ring the Bull. Down by the water, the Packet Inn sits directly on the Chesterfield Canal, in the former Grafton Brewery buildings.
Westlands Butchers makes its own pies and black pudding from local farm meat, matured at least three weeks, and has won national awards for it. Out at Grove, Home Farm Produce butchers free-range pork on site and bakes with Welbeck bread and locally milled flour.
The canal towpath, part of the 46-mile Cuckoo Way, gives an easy circular walk from the Market Place to the Packet Inn, past Retford Mariners' moorings and the Bay Tree café, a converted canal warehouse — under two miles, under an hour, no stiles.
A longer route, the Mayflower Pilgrims' Walk, crosses fields and ancient woodland to Babworth and Scrooby, home to the Separatists who organised the Mayflower's voyage. Back in town, the Pilgrims Gallery at Bassetlaw Museum tells that story through a mirror illusion in a reconstructed study, where local man William Brewster recounts his life, alongside a Wetu built by Wampanoag Nation representatives.
Henry I chartered the borough in about 1105, and the Domesday Book valued the whole place at one pound ten shillings.
Trains reach London King's Cross in under two hours on LNER's Azuma service, roughly every half hour.
On Bridgegate, the White Hart was one of the town's foremost coaching inns, running nineteen scheduled coach services a day by 1828. Three generations of the Dennetts ran it for over a hundred years, from 1818.
