[A] BASFORD lies in a bottom, approached from the race-ground. The scenery around it is rich in the extreme. This village has greatly increased of late, from various manufactures, and the improvements consequent upon them. Here are corn and cotton-mills, and the bleaching and dying branches of business are carried on with considerable success. The church has a very handsome spire, with a nave and side aisles in very good order, but there are no ancient inscriptions. The importance of this place has also been kept up, by its being the seat of the Court of the Honour of Peverel, since it was removed from Nottingham. It sits twice in the year, to try causes as high as L50. A jail for the court is situated here, which Howard describes as having, at the time of his writing, merely one room, with three beds; but the keepers told him he had another little room for women prisoners, of whom there being none in his custody, he applied the apartment to domestic uses. A bowling-green, close by the jail, is much frequented by the inhabitants of Nottingham. At Mapperley, a hamlet in this parish, is a handsome seat of Ichabod Wright, Esq., a banker of Nottingham. [Sidenote: The trade.] [B] BASFORD. Here was born, in 1630, the celebrated Charles Cotton, a burlesque poet of the seventeenth century. He received his education at Cambridge, and afterwards travelled through France. On his return to England he resided with his father at Basford, in the neighbourhood of the Peak. His first production was, a poetical essay on the gallant Earl of Derby. In 1656, he married a daughter of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, a Nottinghamshire Knight. Two years after this his father died; he then succeeded him in the family estate, which was encumbered with mortgages: being of an improvident disposition, he was subject to constant embarrassments, and was even confined for some months in a prison for debt. After the death of his first wife, he married the Countess Dowager of Ardglass. He died at Westminster in 1687. Some of his poems, of considerable merit, were published after his death. [Sidenote: Charles Cotton.]