Newark Road and Main Street once formed part of the turnpike road from Mansfield to Sleaford, which ran through the village and veered sharply to the right by the Plough Inn. Within the village it is now divided into Newark Road, Brownlow’s Hill, Post Office Row and Main Street (which continues north, across the Plough junction, towards the Green and Drove Lane).
Starting from the T-junction with Balderton Lane, it passes on the left: Post Office Row, the old National School (Scout Hut) and Village Halls, the side of the Gables the Church and Charity Farm sites; on the right: the former garden walls of Coddington House and the houses which shelter behind them, past the central village farmhouses (Sunnyside and Manor Farms, with dovecote and barns) where it curves left (past houses on both sides of the road) towards the Plough junction. Until the 1970s there were many old cottages, Hough’s Yard and the Red Lion pub in this area. The village’s first Post Office used to be in a cobbler’s shop and the house next to the Plough was once Knott’s Bakery.
The crossroads at the Plough was formed in the 1930s when the Sleaford road was driven west towards the fish pond to meet Newark road. North of the junction on Plough corner are Jasmine Cottage and Old Vicarage. Beyond this, new houses replacing former buildings and cottages (demolished in the 1970s) and the site of Hall Farm redeveloped from 1998. One 3-storey building that before 1914 was the Globe Tavern, may once have been been connected with weaving. The Inn on the Green was once part of a farm-malting complex fronting the Green – it ceased to be a farmhouse about 60 years ago. The bungalow facing it was the home of the Post Office in the 1960s and the housing estate on the right also dates from then.