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A Walk around Repton with members of the Repton Village History Group

Page 1	Page 2	St. Wystan’s Church, the Crypt and Repton Priory with Colin Kitching

The audio clips were recorded by Dave Kitto in July 2005. To listen to them you will need Windows Media Player 9 or 10, or similar software such as Winamp or Real Player. Audio clips are accompanied by the icon
Although Repton village lies outside The National Forest boundary, our links to Repton parish are much stronger than it first appears. Repton was a capital of the Kingdom of Mercia which covered a vast area of the country, including The National Forest area, and was a principal residence of the Mercian Royal family. In 653AD Christianity came to the Midlands from Northumbria, when Northumbrian priests converted the heathen Mercians, an opportunity which arose out of a marriage between the son of a Mercian King and a daughter of a Northumbrian King. Had The National Forest been created prior to 1880 there would have been much more of Repton parish within its boundary. In 2005 parts of the parish such as Repton Shrubs and Foremark Reservoir are within The National Forest. Until 1880 Repton also held three detached portions of the parish. These included Scaddaws (now Scaddows), Southward (now Southwood) and Ticknall village, which were transferred to Ticknall and the detached portion known as Daniel Hayes Farm which was transferred to Smisby. These former detached areas are all within the boundary of the National Forest in 2005. Repton is an Anglo-Saxon village built next to River Trent. It is a linear village about one mile long, running north to south. At one time Repton’s communication with the rest of the country was by ford or ferry until a toll bridge was built in1839 and released from tolls in 1898. We start our walk from the lych-gate outside St Wystan’s church, near the arched entrance to Repton School, and head towards High Street, formally Long Street and go as far as Main Street, formally Mill Street.
David Guest from Repton Village History Group leads the walk through the village An introduction to Repton by David Guest...	From the corner of Brook End we look out to the Cross Landmarks & the view from Brook End...
The first village landmark is the Cross. The Cross is the centre of Medieval Repton, where there used to be a market, a summer fair and another for the statutes at Michelmas, until 1900. This autumn fair was also for the hiring of domestic servants and farm labour. We see the Old Mitre, originally a public house, The Mitre Inn, but more recently used by Repton School. In 1848 a man sold his wife for a shilling outside The Mitre Inn, bringing her with a halter around her waist from Burton on Trent. The seller and buyer are said to have sealed the bargain over ale in The Mitre Inn! On the opposite side is Cross House, built in 1880, now accommodation for boarders at Repton School
From Brook Street we see the old wall belonging to the Repton Priory; the wall itself is a grade 1 monument and virtually encircles the original priory land, sloping down to Repton Brook and to Milton where the Priory Mill was located	On High Street we find this spiked pole by the Post Office gate. It is a relic of the toll bridge over the River Trent at Willington, built in 1839 and the spikes presumably stopped people from crossing without paying
	At the corner of Hight Street and Askew Grove, in the shade of this holly tree, we are likely to be on the former site of a farm known as Holly Tree Farm, demolished some two decades ago
	On High Street Alan Thompson points out one of the early gas lanterns on the side of a wall. On closer inspection we see that the wall itself is covered in graffiti from 1885
On Hight Street is Tudor lodge, a late 16th century timber framed house, built on a stone plinth. In the 1850s this was a literary institute and a front room was the ‘Penny a Week’ savings bank, a branch of the Burton Bank	This house, next to Tudor Lodge, has been both the Mitre Inn and the Star Inn. It was in fact remodelled as a brick copy of Tudor Lodge, complete with a front porch. Many houses in Repton were modernised in the Georgian and Victorian times by alterations to frontages
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