Worksop

Not to be confused with workshop.
Worksop

Worksop Priory Church
Worksop
 Worksop shown within Nottinghamshire
Population 44,790 [1]
OS grid referenceSK585795
DistrictBassetlaw
Shire countyNottinghamshire
RegionEast Midlands
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post town WORKSOP
Postcode district S80/S81
Dialling code 01909
Police Nottinghamshire
Fire Nottinghamshire
Ambulance East Midlands
EU Parliament East Midlands
UK ParliamentBassetlaw
List of places
UK
England
Nottinghamshire

Coordinates: 53°18′35″N 1°07′22″W / 53.3096°N 1.1227°W / 53.3096; -1.1227

Worksop is the largest town in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England, on the River Ryton at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. It is about 19 miles (31 km) east-south-east of the City of Sheffield and its population is estimated (Mid 2012) to be 44,970.[1] It is also twinned with the German town Garbsen. Worksop is attracting an increasing quantity of commuters to the local area because of its close proximity of Nottingham, Lincoln and Sheffield.

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 Rufford Abbey.

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, Wilkinsons, RDS Transport, GD Engineering, Pandrol UK Ltd and Laing O'Rourke.

Transport

Worksop lies on the A57 with links to the A1, M1 and A60, allowing goods to be easily transported into and out of the area, explaining why Wilkinson and B&Q both have distribution centres in the area.

Worksop is on the Sheffield-Lincoln line, with trains to Sheffield, Doncaster, Meadowhall Interchange, Lincoln, Retford, Gainsborough and Shireoaks. The service is run by Northern. Worksop is also the terminus of the Robin Hood line to Nottingham and Mansfield, a service run by East Midland Trains. At weekends Northern rail run additional trains to Cleethorpes and Bridlington via Worksop.

Bus services provided by Stagecoach East Midlands operate in the town to Doncaster, Shireoaks, Langold, Harworth, Bawtry, Mattersey, Retford, Blyth, Bircotes, Clowne, Tickhill, Chesterfield, Ollerton, Stagecaoch also run services around Worksop. In August 2015 The new Bus Station opened on Watson road replacing the bus stops on Hardy street.

Education

Health

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 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 went through difficult times as it re-orientated to service industries and manufacturing.

Local unemployment is lower than the national average, although from the early 1990s there were issues in the area with heroin abuse.[4] In early 2004, MP John Mann revealed that some 1,200 (more than 1%) of the 104,000-strong population in the area were drug addicts.[5]

An important manufacturer in the town is Premier Foods UK, which produces products such as Batchelor's Soups and Super Noodles and Oxo. Oxo is solely produced in Worksop. Greencore Sandwiches also have a production facility. The Wilkinson UK headquarters is at JK House, Manton Wood, south east of the town on the A57. Their distribution centre is an important employer. RDS Transport (known as the Flying Fridge) based at Claylands Avenue is a major employer of HGV/Van Drivers. There is also a B&Q distribution centre, a plastics recycling plant,[6] a liquid chocolate manufacturing plant owned by OCG Cacao, part of Cargill, and Pandrol a world leader in the manufacture of railway fastenings.

Worksop has benefited from a large amount of new housing recently with a similar increase in businesses locating to the Worksop area, increasing the number of jobs in the local economy.

Religion

Main article: Worksop Priory
St Anne's Church

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.[7] The church was built in 1911 by the Lancaster architects Austin and Paley.[8][9] The church has an historic pipe organ originally built by Gray & Davison in 1852 for Clapham Congregational Church.

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.[10]

The Acorn Theatre is a 200-seat performing arts venue in the town centre, providing a programme of professional and amateur live theatre and folk music. It is a registered charity managed and run by volunteers,and the building is the home of several community performing groups and a youth theatre.

The Regal Centre has been taken by local business men, Martin Gilfoyle, Steve Broadbent and Chris Frampton to provide live entertainment and recording studio facilities including professional live music and arts performances and arts training courses and social support services. This is Worksop's only prime entertainment venue.

The Savoy Cinema was opened on 23 March 2012.

Clumber Park, south of Worksop is a country park owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.

Notable people

Worksop College alumni (Old Worksopians) include:

See also

References and notes

  1. 1 2 "Bassetlaw Council's information on Worksop". Bassetlaw District Council. 20 March 2014. 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. ↑ Beard, Matthew (18 September 2002). "Agencies in Dock over Mining Villages Ravaged by Heroin". The Independent.
  5. ↑ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20040201/ai_n12886027/pg_2/?tag=content;col1
  6. ↑ "Site confirmed for MBA Polymers' UK plant". Recycling International. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
  7. ↑ Historic England, "Church of St Anne, Worksop (1045754)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 30 August 2012
  8. ↑ Pevsner 1979, p. 389.
  9. ↑ Brandwood et al. 2012, p. 248.
  10. ↑ Mr Straw's House by The National Trust, accessed 28 May 2006.
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