Creswell, Derbyshire

Coordinates: 53°16′N 1°12′W / 53.26°N 1.20°W / 53.26; -1.20

Creswell
Signs seen from the corner of Woollen Close and Mansfield Road (2006)
Creswell  Creswell shown within Derbyshire
District	Bolsover
Shire county	Derbyshire
Region	East Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	WORKSOP
Postcode district	S80
Dialling code	01909
Police	Derbyshire
Fire	Derbyshire
Ambulance	East Midlands
EU Parliament	East Midlands
UK Parliament	Bolsover
List of places: UK • England • Derbyshire

Creswell is a village located in Bolsover, near Worksop, Derbyshire, England, United Kingdom. It is best known for Creswell Crags and Creswell Model Village.

Local Government services are provided by Elmton-with-Creswell Parish Council, Bolsover District Council and Derbyshire County Council.

History

Whilst Elmton is mentioned in the Domesday Book, Creswell remained a nearby collection of farming houses until the construction of a turnpike road along the present A616 brought added importance. The arrival of the coal mining industry in the last decade of the 19th century had a dramatic effect on the area and Creswell became the larger community.

Creswell in the 20th century

Creswell expanded throughout the 20th century after a lease was obtained from the Duke of Portland in 1889 for the top hard seam of coal in the area and Creswell Colliery came into being. The Bolsover Colliery Company owned the pit until it was nationalised in 1947. Creswell Colliery was often regarded as one of the most efficient pits in the East Midlands coalfield. The colliery was also well known for its sporting and social activities and Creswell Colliery Band was for a long time one of the country’s leading brass bands and had been broadcast several times on BBC Radio.

Creswell Model Village was built in 1895 to house the coal mining families. Expansion of housing continued throughout the 20th century. Officially Creswell is in Derbyshire but very close to the borders of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Creswell has a Nottinghamshire postal address with a Yorkshire postcode. Creswell Colliery was in the North Nottinghamshire coalfield but miners holidayed at the Derbyshire Miner’s Holiday Camp.

Creswell Colliery mining disaster, 1950

On the night of 26 September 1950, 80 men were overcome by smoke and fumes and perished underground at Creswell Colliery, with 23 bodies remaining underground for a year until it was safe to remove them. Word of the disaster spread quickly around the village and many of the off duty minors and upwardly mobile residents of the village rushed to offer any type of assistance they could, one miner, who had broken his back several months before, went down the stricken pit with a back brace on to rescue his fellow workers.

Amenities

Creswell had two railway stations with the first one (known as Top station locally), later to be closed in the 1940s was Creswell & Welbeck, opened by the LD&ECR in 1897^[1] The second Elmton and Creswell(known as bottom station) was one stop on the Midland Railway line running between Worksop and Mansfield. It was closed by the Beeching axe in the early 1960s but was reopened in the 1990s as the Robin Hood Line.

The local landscape had been very beautiful but during the 20th century it was scarred by a century of mining with the black, spoil tips of unwanted debris from miles underground, with the air-born pollution from the pit chimneys always belching out smoke, scarred by poor architecture and housing.

Beyond the village, the landscape has two very unusual features: Creswell Crags and Markland Grips, both are dolomitic limestone gorges but the former is much more important as it has been identified as the home to prehistoric man and Creswell Crags hosts many famous caves. During World War 2 children used to play in the caves at the Craggs and in the woods behind the Craggs there is a quarry the woods were a great place for sweet chesnuts and Markland Grips popular for fishing, Hazlenuts and Blackberries.

Leisure Centre (including swimming baths)

Creswell in the mid 20th Century supported facilities not to be found in other villages such as a cinema on King Street burned down in the 1930s but was replaced (on Elmton Road) by a stylish art deco cinema called the Regors after being built by the Rogers family in the 1930s, becoming like many others, a bingo hall in the late 1960s. The second facility the village had to offer was the ‘baths’ built in 1919. This was not only a council facility for swimming, it also included slipper baths for the many homes that didn’t have their own bathrooms at this date.

By the mid 20th century the village had one main Church of England parish church and both a Methodist and Baptist chapel. A third chapel had been closed down and was then used as part of the Infant School. A Roman Catholic church was built in the late 1950s.

Creswell Colliery closed in the early 1990s, after the UK miners' strike (1984-1985). Creswell like many other communities throughout the UK had to look for a new direction. A significant drop in population took place.

The Creswell Social Centre(previously called The Drill Hall)has always been the hub of the village; hosting parties and weddings along with sports and entertainment such as wrestling and boxing, both of which have given the Creswell people an event to watch and in many cases the competitors have been from Creswell and the surrounding areas such as Whitwell and Worksop. The centre has also had something for the ladies with male strippers being the feature of a 'Ladies Only' night in August 2009.

References

1. ^ Cupit,T., Taylor, W., (1984 2nd.Ed.) The Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, Trowbridge: The Oakwood Press

External links

• Parish official website
• Creswell Crags official website
• Creswell Band website