St. Ogg's

St. Ogg's,Town on the Floss; the scene of much of the story of The Mill on the Floss. "St Ogg's--that venerable town with the red-fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces . . ." "It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants ; a town, which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town 'familiar with forgotten years'." The original of St. Ogg's is the town of Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, on the River Trent (the "Floss").

<em>The Mill on the Floss</em>

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