“Scarthing Moor” is a name of somewhat terrifying sound; but, as with all the “moors” met with on the Great North Road, enclosure and cultivation have entirely changed its character, and the “moor” is just a stretch of fields undistinguishable from the surrounding country. It leads presently to the little town of Tuxford-in-the-Clay, approached up a steep rise passing under the bridge of the Lincolnshire and East Coast Railway, and in view of Tuxford’s Great Northern Station, away on the right, perched on a windy and uncomfortable-looking ridge. A red rash of recent brick cottages has broken out at the foot of the rise, but Tuxford itself, on the crest of the hill, seems unchanged since coaching days, except that the traffic which then enlivened it has gone. It is a gaunt, lifeless place, in spite of its three railway stations, and stands where the roads cross on the height, and the church, the “Newcastle Arms,” another inn which arrogates the title of “The Hotel,” and the private houses and shops of the decayed town face a wide open street, and all shiver in company. But Tuxford has seen gorgeous sights in its time. Witness the gay and lengthy cavalcade that “lay” here in the July of 1503, when the Princess Margaret was on her way to her marriage with the king of Scotland. The princess stayed at the “Crown,” demolished in 1587 by one of the storms which hill-top Tuxford knows so well, and leaving us the poorer by one ancient hostelry. Not that it would have survived to this day had there been no storm, for the town itself was destroyed by fire at a much later date, in 1702. The “Newcastle Arms” is one of those old houses built for the reception of many and wealthy travellers in the Augustan age of the road, and is by consequence many sizes too large for present needs, so that a portion of the house is set apart for offices quite unconnected with hotel business. Even the roomy old church away on the other side of the broad road seems on too large a scale for Tuxford, as it is, and the stone effigies of the Longvilliers and the mouldy hatchments of later families hanging on the walls of its bare chapels tell a tale of vanished greatness. There is a curious and clumsy carving in this church, representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. The Saint is shown on his gridiron (which resembles nothing so much as a ladder) and wears a pleased expression, as though he rather liked the process of being grilled, while one tormentor is turning him and another blowing up the fire with a pair of bellows. After the church, the old red-brick grammar-school, founded by “Carolo Read” in 1669, is the most interesting building in Tuxford. “What God hath built, let no man destroy,” says the inscription over the entrance, placed there, no doubt, by the donor with a vivid recollection of the destruction wrought in the Civil War of some twenty years before.