Worksop

Worksop
Worksop Priory Church
Worksop  Worksop shown within Nottinghamshire
Population	39,800
OS grid reference	SK585795
District	Bassetlaw
Shire county	Nottinghamshire
Region	East Midlands
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	Bassetlaw
List of places UK England Nottinghamshire

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 15 miles (24 km) east-south-east of the City of Sheffield and its population is estimated (mid-2004) to be 39,800. Worksop is included in the Sheffield City Region of England. It is also twinned with the German town Garbsen.

Worksop is known as the "Gateway to the Dukeries", so called for the number of ducal residences in the area.

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."^[1]

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.^[2]

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, Lincoln, Retford, Gainsborough and Shireoaks. The service is run by Northern Rail. Worksop is also the terminus of the Robin Hood line to Nottingham and Mansfield, a service run by East Midlands trains. At weekends trains run to Cleethorpes and Bridlington from Worksop run by Northern Rail.

Bus services provided by Stagecoach Nottinghamshire and Veolia Transport operate in the town and to Doncaster, Shireoaks, Langold, Harworth, Misson, Bawtry, Everton, Mattersey, Retford, Blyth, Bircotes, Clowne, Tickhill, Rossington, Chesterfield, Misterton, Beckingham, Gainsbourgh, Kiveton Park, Killamarsh, Sheffield - Crystal Peaks, Ollerton, and Robin Hood Airport.

Education

• Gateford Park Primary School
• Holy Family Catholic Primary School is a Catholic School on Netherton Road, next to Portland School.
• Norbridge primary school
• North Notts College is on Carlton Road (A60).
• Outwood Academy Portland
• Outwood Academy Valley
• Prospect Hill Junior School and Prospect Hill Infant and Nursery School
• Redlands primary school
• Ryton Park Primary School (Now on Sparken Hill)
• Sir Edmund Hillary Primary School
• St. Augustine's School
• St. Annes Primary
• St. Johns primary
• Worksop College, a coeducational day and boarding school.
• Worksop Post-16 Centre
• Worksop Priory Primary School

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 and the whole of Nottinghamshire are largely, although not exclusively, provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust who provide in-patient services at Bassetlaw District General Hospital and community services from a variety of locations.

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.^[3] 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.^[4]

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 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,^[5] 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

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.

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.^[6]

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

• Maurice Bembridge, golfer
• Ian Bennett, goalkeeper, currently at Huddersfield Town
• George Best, former goalkeeper with Blackpool
• Basil Boothroyd, Humorous writer
• Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden singer, author, screenwriter, radio DJ, commercial pilot and former marketing director of Astraeus Airlines
• Craig Disley, Footballer, currently playing for Bristol Rovers
• Neil Entwistle, Convicted murderer who shot dead his wife Rachel and their nine-month-old daughter Lillian at their home in Massachusetts in January 2006
• Mark Foster, golfer
• Anne Foy, Former BBC Children's TV Presenter
• Gwen Grant, writer
• Sarah-Jane Honeywell, BBC Children's TV presenter
• Mick Jones, Sheffield United striker of 1960s and 70s
• Liam Palmer, Sheffield Wednesday footballer
• John Parr, musician
• Donald Pleasence, actor
• Graham Taylor, former England manager
• Danny Thomas, footballer, played for Coventry City F.C. & Tottenham Hotspur
• Darren Ward, former football goalkeeper
• Lee Westwood, golfer (reached world number one in 2010, 2011)
• Elliott Whitehouse, footballer for Sheffield United
• Chris Wood, footballer, recently signed for Worksop Town
• Jade Osborne famous chef,

See also

• Worksop Priory

References and notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Worksop.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Worksop.

• Worksop, The Dukery and Sherwood Forest, by Robert White (1875)
• Worksop Guardian
• Bassetlaw District Council