Newspaper articles have been added to the Scarecrows main page showing the original Mr & Mrs Straw who were created by Roger and Davina Walker of Fox & Hounds Farm on Hickling Pastures in October 1996!

Our scarecrow pages have been updated to include photographs, winners and the answers for the Hickling Scarecrow Festival 2023. We also have videos of the Lancaster & Spitfire flypast and a vintage car drive-thru.

If you have any photographs that you would like to share, please contact us through the website or through our FB page.

You can also follow the official Hickling Scarecrow Festival through their Facebook page.

Fields in the Landscape

By Emily Gillott

(Notts County Council Archaeologist)

Hickling Village Hall

September 22nd 7.30pm – please email us to reserve your tickets in advance.

“The talk will be about how clues to the past are hiding in plain sight, and in the most seemingly mundane things, all around us. We’ll take a look at how the shape and layout of fields can help us look into the past using maps, aerial photos, and Lidar, all from the cosy comfort of your armchair and laptop. It might also help you see the landscape in a different light when you’re out and about too!”

We’re collecting your Hickling fishing stories – are you a “piscatorial enthusiast”?!

Unfortunately, we probably have to accept that the legend of the Whale of Hickling Basin is just a fishermen’s tale or a story to frighten the children; nevertheless, there are lots of fish.

We’d love to hear your fishing tales and memories and we’d love to hear from you if you fancy contributing an article about fishing in Hickling.

Follow the link for news clippings including the story of Min the fishing cat who successfully stole fish as they were pulled from the water to feed her kittens.

One of these news articles from 1932 records that, “Perhaps Hickling is principally known for its Basin which is a favourite haunt of piscatorial enthusiasts”, the writer goes on to describe a bream weighing 4lb6oz caught by a Mr Langford and which gave a “wonderful fight for fifteen minutes” and was proclaimed the largest catch for two seasons. “These are not fishermen’s weights but the actual ones, the fish being weighed before several of the enthusiastic villagers.”

Sadly, there are no longer any eels to be caught but pike and bream continue to be a sought after catch.

A new line of 12 fishing pegs was added in August 2023; hopefully, there are more fishing tales still to be written.

We look forward to welcoming you to the first of our quarterly local history gatherings at the Plough Inn, this Tuesday – 25th July 5pm-8pm. This time we’re focusing on Maps and aerial photographs but we welcome everyone and anything ‘local history’!

(9th May 2023) Please click here for photographs of Hickling’s celebrations (May 6th-8th 2023). We would love to share your memories; please use this link to send us your photos and anecdotes to add to our archives – contact us .

(3rd May 2023) It’s time to break out the bunting and get together with your neighbours (especially at the Plough Inn and the Village Hall)!!

Please take lots of photos over the Coronation Weekend and share them with us all by emailing info@hicklingnottslocalhistory.com

New page: The Coronation of King Charles III – click here

Welcome to the wonderful story of Dr Lucy Jocelyn Burnett – she was Hickling’s first lady doctor and she practised in our area from 1927 to 1935. Maggy Wadkin wrote that her arrival, ‘put the cat amongst the pigeons’ but that everyone quickly became very fond of her.

She was ‘a little slip of a thing’ but she did her rounds on an early Enfield motor-cycle or in her sports car and she was always accompanied by her dog, Christopher – he rode pillion on the back of the motorbike, wound up the local dogs with his barking and sat outside each home as the ‘Little Doc’ made her visits.

As a young woman of 26 when she came to the area she was a pioneer amongst women emerging in the medical profession and she undertook all the roles that you would expect; including weekly drop-in clinics at the Chapel, midnight dashes on horseback through the floods to attend a Hickling birth and the work we now associate with paramedics – first on the scene at accidents and tragedies across the Vale of Belvoir (the news clippings of these incidents paint a vivid picture of her life).

There are lots of anecdotes, news clippings and memories of her at her retirement and the time of her death – we hope you will come to love her as much as we do!!

In 1935 she moved to Clive in Shropshire where she remained until her death in the 1970s; we are very grateful to the local history group in Clive and Grinshill who have filled out her story and given us the only photographs we have of her. We hope that more will follow!

If so, please let us know – members of the Burnett family are trying to build a list of the work carried out by the family who were builders, joiners and wheelwrights in the area over a hundred-year period. Thomas Burnett came to Hickling from Hose in the mid-1800s and his son (William) and grandson (Harold) followed him in the business.

Click here.

These days we leave a digital footprint and local historians routinely track through the formalities of our lives – headstones, memorials, dedications, parish records and legal documents. If they’re really lucky they might find a diary or journal.

Intriguingly, more personal traces can also be found – graffiti is a great example but also carvings were often based on real people – their likenesses (although sadly not their names) preserved for hundreds of years. Some of these may be self-portraits but others would have been villagers either loved, hated or ridiculed for posterity!

Photographs (below) include:

• Poppy Head pew carvings which can be seen on the old pews in the choir stalls and by the choir vestry
• graffiti on the church door and signatures scratched in to one of the East windows – these glass engravings seem to record craftsmen who worked on the Church and Church Officers including Churchwardens.

This year we plan to work on a detailed history of the Church and Churchyard – if you would like to help, please get in touch!

Photos credit: David Powell (Nov 2022)