Lisa Hendrix

Hokenall, the village where Marian finds her old friend Nichola de Markham, lies in the Leen Valley about seven miles Northwest of Nottingham City. It’s an ancient settlement, with a church built to St. Mary Magdalene in the Saxon era (added to in late 12th century, restored 1874), and at the time of Steinarr and Marian’s visit would have been home to perhaps 2-300 people.

Today the town of about 30,000 is a bedroom community for Nottingham known simply as Hucknall, but from 1295 to 1919, it was called Hucknall Torkard, after a family of wealthy landowners in the area. The first of the family, Geoffrey Torcard (or Gaufr Torcaz, late 12th c) was a patron of nearby Newstead Abbey and gave the monks 120 acres of land from his holdings. Ties remained strong between village and abbey through the centuries until the dissolution.

Unfortunately, even with the obsessive record-preservation habits of the Brits, documents mentioning the Torcards of Hokenall are thin and dribble off to nothing just after 1300, so I got to make up Lord Peter and Lady Nichola from whole cloth. Nichola’s vision problems come out of musings on what my nearsighted, half-blind life would be like without glasses and contacts. Good light–in short supply in England during winter–would be critical. Thus her glass window, a loving and practical gift from her husband. Such a glass window in a private home would still have been rare in the late 13th century, so it’s logical that King Edward and Lord David would fix on it to use as a clue in the quest.

For hundreds of years, Hucknall was a center for framework knitting of stockings. The frame was invented in 1559 in a neighboring village (Calverton) and men from Hokenall joined the Luddite riots that started in Arnold, just 4 miles southeast, in 1811. Two were arrested and sentenced to deportation to Tasmania. Despite the Luddite’s efforts, stocking knitting gradually faded away during the first half of the 19th c. The village turned to glove-making, then to the knitting of shawls, falls, and antimacassars, but nothing fully replaced the hosiery trade until coal was discovered in the Leen Valley in the 1860s.

There are several theories about the roots of the name Hucknall, which appears in the names of several nearby villages including Huthwaite (formerly Hucknall-under-Huthwaite) and Ault-Hucknall. It may have evolved from “nook of the Hōcanere” a tribe whose name appears elsewhere in England, or it may be the Anglo-Saxon “Occa’s Knoll” (knoll meaning place) or “Oak-en-Hall” (place of the oak). The last seems especially fitting, since the area was notorious for the rank, growth of oaks that made the road and tracks nearly impassable.

As the final resting place of George, Lord Byron, and his daughter, the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall is a mecca for literary pilgrims. Byron, of course, famously made his home at Newstead Abbey, our next stop.

You can find out more about Hucknall, the Torcard family, and the Luddites at hucknall-torkard.com and at Nottingham History.