Worksop

Worksop

Approaching Worksop Town Lock
Worksop
Worksop shown within Nottinghamshire
Population 44,790 [1]
Demonym Worksopian
OS grid reference SK 58338 78967
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town WORKSOP
Postcode district S80, S81
Dialling code 01909
Police Nottinghamshire
Fire Nottinghamshire
Ambulance East Midlands
EU Parliament East Midlands
UK Parliament

Worksop is the largest town in the Bassetlaw district of Derbyshire, England. Worksop lies on the River Ryton, and is located at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. Worksop is located 19 miles (31 km) east-south-east of City of Sheffield, with an estimated population (Mid 2012) of 44,970.

Worksop has become a commuter town as a result of its geographic location and ease of access to major motorways and rail links.

Worksop is known as the "Gateway to The Dukeries", because of the now four obsolete ducal principal sites of which were closely located next to each other, south of the town. These four ducal locations were; Clumber House, Thoresby Hall, Welbeck Abbey and Worksop Manor. A fifth house called Rufford Abbey is also close by.

Worksop is twinned with the German town Garbsen.

History

Evidence that Worksop existed before the Norman conquest of England in 1066 is provided by the Domesday Book of 1086:

"In Werchesope, (Worksop) Elsi (son of Caschin) had three carucates of land to be taxed. Land to eight ploughs. Roger has one plough in the demesne there, and twenty-two sokemen who hold twelve oxgangs of this land, and twenty-four villanes and eight bordars having twenty-two ploughs, and seven acres of meadow. Wood pasture two miles long, and three quarentens broad."[2]

In about 1103, William de Lovetot established a castle and the Augustinian priory at Worksop. Subsequently, Worksop grew into a market town.

A skirmish occurred in the area during the Wars of the Roses on 16 December 1460, commonly known as the Battle of Worksop.

The building of the Chesterfield Canal in 1777, and the subsequent construction of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1849, both of which passed through the settlement, led to a degree of growth. Discovery of sizeable coal seams further increased interest in the area.

Coal mining provided thousands of jobs in and around Worksop for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, but by the 1990s the pits had closed, resulting in high local unemployment. Drug abuse in the area also soared.[3]

Unemployment levels in the area are now lower than the national average, owing to large number of distribution and local manufacturing companies, including Premier Foods, Wilko, RDS Transport, GD Engineering, Pandrol UK Ltd and Laing O'Rourke.

Transport

Worksop lies on the A57 and A60 with links to the A1 and M1.

Worksop is on the Sheffield-Lincoln line, with direct services running to Sheffield, Leeds and Lincoln. Services call at Retford, Gainsborough, Saxilby, Shireoaks, Kiveton Park, Kiveton Bridge, Woodhouse, Darnall, Meadowhall, Barnsley and Wakefield. These services are run by Northern. Worksop is also the terminus of the Robin Hood line to Nottingham via Mansfield, a service run by East Midlands Trains. At weekends Northern run additional services to Grimsby and Cleethorpes via Worksop.

Bus services provided by Stagecoach East Midlands operate in the town to Doncaster, Shireoaks, Langold, Harworth, Bawtry, Retford, Blyth, Bircotes, Clowne, Tickhill, Chesterfield, Ollerton, and Nottingham, Stagecoach also run internal services within Worksop.

Education

Primary

  • Gateford Park Primary School
  • Holy Family Catholic Primary School
  • Norbridge Academy
  • Prospect Hill Infant and Nursery School
  • Redlands Primary And Nursery School
  • Sparken Hill Academy (was called Ryton Park Primary School)
  • Sir Edmund Hillary Primary School
  • St. Augustine's School
  • St Anne's C Of E (Aided) Primary School
  • St John's Primary School
  • Worksop Priory C of E Primary Academy[4]


Secondary



Further education

Healthcare

Worksop is served by the Bassetlaw District General Hospital, part of the Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Foundation Trust. It is a large hospital, treating 33,000 people in year in addition to 38,000 emergencies at the A&E department. It is also used as a Teaching hospital by the University of Sheffield Medical School.

Mental Health services in Worksop are provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust who provide both in-patient and community services. Wards run by Nottinghamshire Healthcare provide training for medical students at the Universities of Nottingham and Lincoln wishing to work within Adult Mental Health Services .

Local economy

Following the collapse of the coal mining industry in the 1980s, the local economy re-orientated to service industries, manufacturing and distribution.

Major employers in the area include Premier Foods, Greencore, Wilko UK headquarters and distribution centre, RDS Transport (the Flying Fridge), B&Q distribution centre, MAKE polymers,[5] OCG Cacao, part of Cargill, Pandrol, GCHQ and the NHS(Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Trust and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust).

Local unemployment is lower than the national average.

Religion

St Anne's Church

Worksop has three churches which are all on the National Heritage List for England.

Officially titled the Priory Church of Saint Mary and Saint Cuthbert, is the Anglican parish church usually known as Worksop Priory. It was an Augustinian Priory founded in 1103. The church has a magnificent nave and detached gatehouse. Monks at the priory made the Tickhill Psalter, one of the finest illuminated manuscripts of the medieval period, now held in New York Public Library. After the dissolution of the Monasteries the east end of the church fell into disrepair, but the townspeople were granted the nave as a parish church. The eastern parts of the building have been restored in several phases, the most recent being in the 1970s when the architect Lawrence King rebuilt the crossing.

St. Anne's Church is an Anglican parish church and is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.[6] The church was built in 1911 by the Lancaster architects Austin and Paley.[7][8] The church has an historic pipe organ originally built by Gray and Davison in 1852 for Clapham Congregational Church.

St. John's Church is a Parish church built between 1867 and 1868 by architect Robert Clarke.

Places of interest

Mr Straw's House, the family home of the Straw family, was inherited by the Straw brothers, William and Walter when their parents died in the 1930s. The house remained unaltered until the National Trust acquired it in the 1990s and opened it to the public.[9] Clumber Park, south of Worksop is a country park, also owned by the National Trust, and is open to the public.

Notable people

See also

References and notes

  1. ↑ "Bassetlaw Council's information on Worksop". Bassetlaw District Council. 20 March 2014. Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
  2. ↑ White, Robert (1875) Worksop, The Dukery, and Sherwood Forest. Transcription at Nicholson, AP: Nottinghamshire History (Accessed 24 December 2005).
  3. ↑ Boniface, Susie (24 October 2010). "George Osborne wreaks havoc .. just like Margaret Thatcher in 1980s". The Mirror.
  4. ↑ "Worksop Priory C of E Primary Academy". Nottinghamshire County Council. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  5. ↑ "Site confirmed for MBA Polymers' UK plant". Recycling International. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
  6. ↑ Historic England, "Church of St Anne, Worksop (1045754)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 30 August 2012
  7. ↑ Pevsner 1979, p. 389.
  8. ↑ Brandwood et al. 2012, p. 248.
  9. ↑ Mr Straw's House by The National Trust, accessed 28 May 2006.
  • Brandwood, Geoff; Austin, Tim; Hughes, John; Price, James (2012), The Architecture of Sharpe, Paley and Austin, Swindon: English Heritage, ISBN 978-1-84802-049-8
  • {{Citation | last = Pevsner| first = Nikolaus| author-link = Nikolaus Pevsner | publication-date = | date = | year = 1979| title = Nottinghamshire| edition = 2nd| volume = | series = Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England| publication-place = New Haven and London| place = | publisher = [[Yale University II listed building. Press]]| pages = | page = | format = | id = | isbn = 978-0300096361| doi = | oclc = | url = | accessdate =}}
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