Image ID: 08925

Newark Civic Week, 1949 3rd-10th July 1949

Courtesy of Mrs D E Richardson

Northgate Railway Station
Newark on Trent
England

Newark Civic week was held between 3rd and 10th July 1949 in celebration of the towns Quater Centenary of the granting of the first Borough Charter in 1549. Numerous events were organised throughout the week. This picture shows Mr Arthur Hindson with his horse, Blossom, who took part in the 'progress parade' around the town. Blossom was of course, a working shire horse, and was employed (with Mr Hindson) by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) in Newark. Mr Hindson's connection with shire horses may suggest that his working background lay in agriculture, but in fact he and Blossom were employed as railway workers at Newark's Northgate Station. Mr Hindson (1900-1956) was one of the last horse shunters at Northgate and he and Blossom were needed to shunt wagons around some of the smaller siding. Horse shunting only came to an end at Newark in the mid 1950's by which time it had been a feature of station life for more than 100 years. Northgate station first opened in August 1852 and by January 1853 records show that 15 shillings a week was being paid by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) for keeping a stabling capacity at Northgate and by 1878 there were four employed to work with the shunting horses. The shunting horses, it should be mentioned , were quite distinct from dray horses - also stabled at Northgate - which were used for pulling delivery vehicles around the town. Like many railway towns in the early years of this century, Newark had extensive sidings and the shunting of wagons for unloading or making up into new trains was a constant feature of station life. In the big marshalling yards at Northgate-the up yard (to the north east of the station) and the down yard (to the south west), locomotives were used, but on some of the smaller sidings horses remained the most appropriate means available. Shire horses were used to shunt wagons in the goods shed, coke yard, and grain yard at the south end of the station and into the sidings that lead to Sidney Street maltings. Horse shunting also took place on the so-called Western or Cow Lane Wharf sidings which ran beside the Trent to connect with factories such as Farrars boilerworks, Peach's maltings and Warwicks and Richardsons brewery. Here access to the companies' yards was controlled by small turntables which would turn wagons off the main sidings at 90 degrees. The turntables could onyl accommodate one wagon at a time and with no room for a locomotive, the horse shunters came into their own. The horses would pull the wagons on to the turntables and into the factory yards, from where, after unloading and reloading they would tow them back on to the main sidings. It is interesting to note that some 19th Century line drawings and advertising posters of Warwicks and Richardsons show GNR locomotives operating within the brewery curtilage. This was certainly never the case as all working was carried out by the shire horses from Northgate. The Western/Cow Lane Wharf sidings were constructed in the late 1860's by the Midland Railway with joint funding from the GNR. Warwicks and Richardsons brewery was one of the largest businesses served by the sidings, and in his book, Brewery Railways (1986), Ian Peaty notes that a letter of application for a siding was first sent by Warwicks to the Midland Railway in 1871. By 1973 receipts show that construction into the brewery yard was well underway and by 1879 Warwicks had bought two coal wagons, with two more being purchased in 1881. A fifth privately owned coal wagon was in use at Warwicks by 1897, and it was these, together with wagons bringing barley, malt and taking away the finished beers, that were horse shunted into and out of the yard. Each horse shunter such as Mr Hindson (pictured) looked after his own horse-feeding, grooming and so on-and the stables at Northgate were located just to the right of the main station entrance. Mr Hindson began working as a horse shunter at Northgate after the second world war. He lived in the village of Holme and had to cycle eight miles or so to work every day-including weekends when , even if she was not working, Blossom still had to be fed and watered. The horse shunters certainly took pride in their animals and Mr Hindson's daughter, Doreen Richardson remembers how Blossom was always immaculately turned out. By the time this week's picture was taken in 1949 Blossom and another horse (worked either by a Mr Simmonds or a Mr Bullimore) were the only two shunting horses left at Northgate. It is thought that horse shunting finished altogether in the mid 1950's and Mr Hindson ended his days at Northgate with a small Fordson tractor with a solid plank fixed to each end, pushing or pulling the wagons over the turntables as required.

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