How Bawtry Wharf - Yorkshire's 12th-century inland port - could finally get listed protection over 100 years after it vanished from the landscape

Bawtry Wharf was in existence from the 12th century onwards, when goods would be sent along the River Idle to the larger Trent and Humber for onward export to Europe’s Baltic ports.

The coaching town of Bawtry, near Doncaster, grew rich in the 18th century as local merchants made their fortunes from river trade and proximity to the Great North Road – yet by the mid-1800s the docks were in severe decline, and by the 20th century had disappeared from the landscape after the river was re-routed. The port had to face off competition from the building of the Chesterfield Canal, improvements to navigation of the River Don and the coming of the Great Northern Railway – now East Coast Main Line – which opened a station in Bawtry, but survived well into the 19th century.

The South Yorkshire Local Heritage List – a partnership between Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield councils and South Yorkshire Archaeology Service – is considering listing Bawtry Wharf as a Local Heritage Asset, which would give it recognition and some degree of protection from adverse development.

An anonymous submission has been made and the public can comment on the case before a final decision is made by Doncaster Council.

The detailed report points out that Bawtry Wharf traded for around 700 years – longer than any other inland port in the region and at one point the third-busiest in England. It was still visible as late as 1905.

The wharves were located near St Nicholas Church and the modern St Nicholas Way housing estate on a curve on the western side of the Idle, at the end of Wharf Street, and a warehouse likely to have been associated with the port still exists.

The wharves were used for unloading coal for the local gasworks, built in 1834, but by 1848 when the railway arrived, trade had declined significantly and the viaduct built for the railway compromised the port’s remaining functions. The river passed under it and was still accessible, yet just nine years later the final death knell came when the timber viaduct was replaced with a stone one. The Idle had to be diverted to a new straight cut 300 metres away, and the original course and pool where the wharf had been were left cut off. The area features in an 1899 map but was eventually built over.

This undignified end was a far cry from the port’s golden age, when cargo would arrive by wagon into Bawtry from all over the region – tools from Sheffield, lead from Derbyshire, wool and timber from Nottinghamshire. The goods were destined for Hull Docks and then Holland, Belgium, Germany, Norway and Sweden. Ironmasters even sent their products as far afield as Barbados from Bawtry. Just before it closed, the wharf received limestone from Roche Abbey and took delivery of steel, copper and tin from Europe. There was a also a weekly packet boat service to Gainsborough operated by the wharf-keeper in the 1830s.

Many of the grand Georgian townhouses in Bawtry were built with river wealth, such as the merchant Aquila Dawson’s residence on the Market Place. London merchants even operated from Bawtry, and in the 16th century caused outrage in Hull when they opened their own weigh-house so they could ship lead straight to the capital, bypassing the Humber facilities. Vessels of considerable size could berth in Bawtry.

The first reference to a port in Bawtry dates from 1272, in the Hundred Rolls, which recorded the shipping of 40 sacks of wool to Hull – but there is strong evidence it was a century older, as the rest of the town laid out in 1200 was built a slight distance away. There has even been speculation the Romans could have used the river for trade.

The report states: “Notwithstanding the possibility that Bawtry's wharf existed prior to the 12th century, its survival into the 19th century means the wharf saw at least 700 years of activity - that must be very significant, and rare. Other inland ports did exist in South Yorkshire, but they were much smaller and did not operate over such a long time span.

" The site of the wharf at Doncaster has survived much better than Bawtry's, but it only became of importance at the end of the 18th century when the upper reaches of

the Don were improved and even then it remained subservient to Bawtry because it could only handle smaller vessels. Inland ports are not common; ones of the level of importance Bawtry had - certainly regional, but also national - are rare.

"Ironically, the cause of the port's final demise - the diversion of the river - makes Bawtry's wharf even rarer in a sense. Not only is Bawtry an historical inland port which no longer has a wharf, but it it is an historical inland port which no longer has a river.

"A port function was probably the cause of settlement at Bawtry in the first place, and almost certainly the reason it was developed as a new "planted" town around 1200. In the hundred or two years after this, some accounts have it that Bawtry was England's third biggest inland port. By the 16th century river trade had slumped, but in 1724 Daniel Defoe wrote that the River Idle was ‘a full and quick stream, with a deep channel which carries hoys, lighters, barges or flat-bottomed vessels, out of the channel into

the Trent...’ making Bawtry ‘the chief centre of exportation for this part of the country.’

River trade remained crucial to Bawtry's development until the end of the 18th century, when coaching began to take over. Nevertheless it survived until 1857. Revenues from that trade enriched Bawtry families, such as the Dawsons, whose fine house with a 17th century frontage adorns the Market Place.

"The significance of the wharf and river trade in the development and growth of the community is well known to Bawtry residents, if poorly understood. Listing might improve that understanding.”

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