Defending Nottinghamshire

This book examines the impact of military events on Nottinghamshire's landscape from prehistoric hill forts to Cold War bunkers. Straddling the valley of the Trent, Nottinghamshire has long enjoyed a strategic importance as a frontier region in the early days of the Roman conquest, and during the struggles between the emerging Saxon kingdoms and the Danes. The Normans built castles to pacify the land, as did the kings and barons involved in the dynastic struggles which characterised long periods of medieval times. Throughout the Civil War it provided a battleground for Parliamentarian forces seeking to sever the Royalist communications centred on Newark-upon-Trent. In the twentieth century it provided training camps for Kitchener's New Armies, munitions factories, and both training and operational airfields. This book describes the evidence, function and purpose of defensive structures and records survivals.

Auteur

Mike Osborne has been recording these structures for 30 years and, for the duration of the Defence of Britain Project, was its volunteer co-ordinator in the eastern counties.

Résumé
Nottinghamshire's position at the very heart of England has given it important strategic significance throughout two millennia, underlined by the number of roads, waterways, and later railways, criss-crossing the county. An endless succession of armies have used the Great North Road: the Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, the Lancastrians and the Jacobites. Strategic river crossings and road junctions have been guarded by Roman camps, Viking and Saxon burhs, medieval castles, Parliamentarian and Royalist forts, and the anti-invasion defences of the Second World War. The area has traditionally provided a rallying point for armies to be gathered, from Richard III's in 1485 to Kitchener's in 1914. Building on the experience of the great training camps of Clipstone and the Dukeries and the extensive munitions works of Chilwell and Nottingham, in the Second World War the county expanded such provision, becoming home to a concentration of flying training centres, key components of the army's and the RAF's logistical support networks and further munitions plants. Much of this military activity has left its mark on the landscape, some of it relatively untouched, and some adapted to meet the demands of change. Some monuments are of enormous national importance; Newark-on-Trent, as well as retaining its unspoilt medieval castle ruins, boasts the best single concentration of Civil War-period fortifications anywhere in Britain.