Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 04 April 1902
Conisborough on Good Friday
Exactly how and when and why Conisboro’ first became regarded as a report of trippers on Good Friday no one seems to know. We who live to close to the famed village, and who know something of its daily life, can scarce understand what there is about the place to attract such large numbers of visitors.
Of course, there is the old castle—but that is nothing really; there is river—but who cares for rowing on the sewage-laden Don? There are the crags—but the charm of the crags is solitude, which is altogether gone when visitors are to be found seated on almost every available limestone boulder; and there is the fair, with the roundabouts and shooting galleries—well, that sort of thing’s all right once a year, at the annual Feast, you know, but who would like to be seen on the ‘ride-horses” at Conisboro’ on Good Friday, in such a crowd too?
A friend asks you if you intend to spend Good Friday at Conisborough. You meet the question with a disdainful smile. “Con-is-broa!” you exclaim in a tone which seems to suggest that you regard the place as an plague spot. — The idea! I wouldn’t be seen there for anything.” And the worst of it is you really mean what you say at the time.
But Easter comes—like it did this year with some wet days before it. You are ready to welcome a rest ordinary work for a few days but the question as to how the holiday shall he spent causes you more wore, than you care to admit. Your wife thinks it will be too cold to go into Lincolnshire on a visit to Uncle William and Aunt Mary. These country farm houses are all right in the summer, but in the early spring you have your doubts.
“Well, we might spend a day in Manchester, or Leeds, or even Sheffield,” you suggest ‘ ‘
“That’s all right, but what about getting back! The trains run as Sundays on Good Fridays. don’t they?
They do. You have to admit it. But then how do the trains run on Sundays? Where’s that time table? Gone again!