In this series of short articles, we would like to introduce you to some of the highlights of living in Newark on Trent.
This article focuses on another of the historic buildings which surrounds our town's market square. Newark is a town steeped in history and in the market square everywhere you look is an interesting building with an interesting history.
As you look around Newark Market Place there is a building right on the corner with one part facing towards the Market Place and the other facing Bridge Street. On the Bridge Street side of the building are a number of blind windows. These are not actually windows but are meant to mimic windows to provide symmetry and balance on the façade of a building but were never actually real windows.
The building is currently occupied by GH Porter, a long established provisions business. The business that became Porters appeared in c.1890 when George Howard Porter moved to Newark from Nottingham to manage a new branch of the Spence & Co grocery business. Porter bought the business in c.1894 and it remained in the ownership of the family until 1968. However, for a lot of its history the building was occupied by successive generations of the Ridge family who were booksellers and printers.
The firm of S & J Ridge printed the first collection of Lord Byron’s Poems in 1806 and 1807 and there is a plaque on the building commemorating this. The printing press on which the poems were printed now resides in Newark Museum in the National Civil War Centre.
His first volume of verse entitled Fugitive Pieces was privately printed in the autumn of 1806, when Byron was eighteen years of age. Byron presented the first copy to the Reverend J.T. Becher, prebendary of Southwell minster, who objected to what he considered the poem "To Mary" 'too warmly drawn'. The objection from Reverend Becher and other Southwell residents led Byron to suppress the edition immediately, he rounded up and destroyed every copy he could find; only four copies of Fugitive Pieces are known to-day and one of these is incomplete.
Lord Byron visited Ridge’s shop on many occasions while he stayed at the Clinton Arms (then the Kingston Arms) overseeing the printing of his poems (1806-08). During this period he was staying with his mother, the Scottish heiress Catherine Gordon, at Burgage Manor in Southwell, which his mother rented.
As the first printing of the poems ran out Ridge told Byron that he had reprinted some sheets to make up a few more copies; in fact he continued to reprint the whole volume surreptitiously on paper watermarked 1811. John Murray later noticed either this imposture or the spurious ‘large paper’ copies of Hours of Idleness, and informed Byron who replied, ‘I have no means of ascertaining whether the Newark Pirate has been doing what you say – if so – he is a rascal & a shabby rascal too – and if his offence is punishable by law or pugilism he shall be fined or buffeted’ (5 February 1814).
In a previous letter written in August 1806 he called Ridge a “blockhead” for making a mistake in the printing; “I presume the printer has brought you the offspring of my poetic mania. Remember in the first line to read "loud the winds whistle," instead of "round," which that blockhead Ridge had inserted by mistake, and makes nonsense of the whole stanza. Addio!”.
Next time you visit Newark Market Place, why not take a look at the building and remember the history that it was privy to.
