Newark is a handsome market town on the Trent, grouped around a cobbled square of Georgian inns below the ruins of its castle. King John died in that castle in 1216; four centuries later it was one of the great Royalist strongholds of the Civil War, holding out through three sieges before surrendering in 1646 and being slighted. Over the rooftops rises St Mary Magdalene, whose 14th-century spire is among the tallest and finest of any English parish church. Newark Castle station sits just north-west of the centre.
