A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



Forest, which occupies a considerable area on the western side of the 

 county, between Mansfield on the south and Worksop on the north. 

 Within this region, especially in the extensive woods known as the Birk- 

 lands and Bilhagh, may be seen some of the finest primeval woodland in 

 Britain ; the trees are mainly oak and birch, many of them, especially 

 the former, being evidently of great antiquity. Such are the celebrated 

 Major, Parliament, Shambles and Greendale Oaks. There is usually no 

 undergrowth beyond a dense and luxuriant carpet of bracken. Other 

 parts of the district, from which the old timber had long ago been 

 cleared, are now occupied by extensive plantations of oak, beech, larch 

 and other conifers, sweet-chestnut and other trees. The open forest and 

 park lands are dotted over with ancient thorn trees, often infested with 

 mistletoe ; the ground vegetation consists of various grasses with ling 

 and heath, gorse and bracken. 



Nottinghamshire is almost entirely within the drainage area of the 

 Trent. This noble river, rising in the Staffordshire moors, enters the 

 county near its south-west corner, shortly after its junction with the 

 Derbyshire Derwent at Sawley, receives at once the waters of the Erewash 

 and Soar, and thence passing along the southern boundary of the city 

 of Nottingham, crosses the county in a north-easterly direction to 

 Newark, whence it flows almost due north, finally leaving the county 

 at West Stockwith, a village at the extreme north-east corner of 

 Notts. Among its purely Nottinghamshire tributaries are the Leen, 

 which rises in the Robin Hood Hills and flows into the canal at 

 Lenton, and thence into the Trent at Nottingham ; the Cocker Beck, 

 Dover Beck, and Greet from the north-west enter the Trent near Gun- 

 thorpe, Caythorpe and Fiskerton respectively ; the united waters of 

 the Smite and Devon rivers, flowing north from Leicestershire, join 

 the Newark branch of the Trent at Newark ; and finally at the ex- 

 treme north-east of the county the Trent is reinforced by the waters 

 of the Idle, a river formed by the union of the Ryton, Poulter, Meden, 

 Maun, and Vicar and Rainworth waters, which drain the Sherwood 

 Forest region. In the parks of Sherwood Forest several artificial 

 lakes of considerable size have been formed along the course of the 

 streams. 



As before mentioned the county of Nottingham is in shape an ir- 

 regular, elongated oval, its long axis pointing somewhat N.E. and S.W. 

 It thus coincides in position with the general strike of the English sedi- 

 mentary rocks which accordingly run through it from end to end as long 

 bands of varying width. Owing to the narrowness of the county, 

 however, these bands are very few in number, and consequently there is 

 little variety in the nature of the rocks which form the surface, and 

 therefore of the scenery due to such diversity of geological forma- 

 tions. 



By far the greater part of the surface of the county is occupied by 

 the Trias or New Red Sandstone, the two main divisions of which 

 the Upper or Keuper and the Lower or Bunter form broad bands, each 



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