Mansfield

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Mansfield
Coordinates: 53.1435° N 1.1963° W
Population	69,987
OS grid reference	SK537610
District	Mansfield (district)
Shire county	Nottinghamshire
Region	East Midlands
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	MANSFIELD
Postcode district	NG18, NG19
Dial code	01623
Police	Nottinghamshire
Fire	Nottinghamshire
Ambulance	East Midlands
UK Parliament	Mansfield
European Parliament	East Midlands
List of places: UK • England • Nottinghamshire

Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire close to Nottingham. It lies on the River Maun, from which the name of the town (Maun's field) is derived. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. The town itself has a population of around 70,000, with about 100,000 living in the district. It is at the terminus of the A38.

The town has a museum and the Palace Theatre. Mansfield has a large market square and large commercial centre focusing around the market. The town's rival is the nearby town of Chesterfield; the origins of the rivalry comes from the towns' football teams. The television presenter Richard Bacon came from Mansfield and the singer Alvin Stardust lived there as a child. Classical pianist John Ogdon was born in the suburb of Mansfield Woodhouse in 1937. Mansfield is also the home of World Choir Olympics champions; the Cantamus Girls Choir.

The area also has entertainment such as a cinema, swimming pool, and an exciting nightlife, with three nightclubs (Illusions, Liquid and The Late Lounge) and numerous pubs and bars. Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence described as "that once romantic now utterly disheartening colliery town" in Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Mansfield is well regarded as a town that has adapted well to change from the old traditional industries associated with the coal mining industry collapse. Some Yorkshire folk still associate the town with failure to support the UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985); football matches between Mansfield Town and Doncaster Rovers have seen fans of the latter chant "scab".

The ancestral home of Lord Byron, Newstead Abbey, is located not far away in Ravenshead. The community based Bandwagon Recording Studios are also to be found close by.

The town's bus station is often cited by locals as one of the very worst places in England to spend time waiting for transport. The town, like many others, continues to suffer from glaring problems with drugs, alcoholism and antisocial behaviour. There is a wealthy area of Mansfield, around Berry Hill and High Oakam areas, where the houses are large and noted for their well-kept gardens.

Contents 1 Transport 2 Sport and education 3 Local economy 4 Trivia 5 Twin towns 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Transport

The town was the terminus of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway built originally as a horse-drawn plateway in 1819. The line was one of the first acquisitions of the newly-formed Midland Railway. Prior to the 1970s the town had two railway stations, the LNER line on Great Central Road, near Ratcliffe Gate, and the LNR line on Station Road near Belvedere Street. From the early 1950s the LNER line ceased carrying passengers and remained as a Freight only line. In the 1970s the LNR ceased to travel via Mansfield, the railway yards at Cambridge Street, off Princes Street also closed about this time. The town was then, until the 1990s, the largest in the UK without a railway station. One has since been built, incorporating the old Mansfield and Pinxton building, to serve the Robin Hood Line, which runs on a large viaduct over the town centre. The town still has no rail service on a Sunday.

A tram service operated between 1905 and 1932 run by Mansfield & District Light Railways.

Buses in Mansfield are primarily operated by Stagecoach, with Trent Barton, Veolia Transport (Dunn-Line) and Unity Coaches also operating in the area. During term time free buses are provided for travel between some, but not all, sites of West Nottinghamshire College and locations such as the Mansfield Bus Station for students and teachers.

[edit] Sport and education

Mansfield is home to the Football League club Mansfield Town, known as the Stags, as well as Mansfield Rugby Football union club. Angling is well supported in the Mansfield district, where ponds remain from the former textile milling industry. The centre of sport within the town was focused for many years around the Mansfield Leisure Centre on Chesterfield Road. However in 2006 the council sold the site to Tesco, which along with the adjoining Ford Car Centre will be demolished to make way for a new Tesco supermarket, leaving the town without a central leisure facility(Revision: Although the site was sold to Tesco they were only allowed to buy it under the condition they replace the centre. The ageing centre was replaced with a new better equipped centre very close to the original site) . There is a large sports college in Mansfield Woodhouse called the Manor School. The headmaster is Jonathan Hickman. It has a sports centre. The Sherwood Hall School and Sixth Form College is on Sherwood Hall Road (B6030) towards Forest Town. The Brunts School (including a sixth form) is on Park Avenue, next door to a sewage works and the railway to Worksop near the A60, and was named a Performing Arts college in 2003 in conjunction with the nearby All Saints' R.C School. All Saints is the only Roman Catholic secondary school in Nottinghamshire, north of the city of Nottingham, and currently has an attendance of over 1200 pupils under the leadership of Mr. Kenneth Daly. The Queen Elizabeth's (1561) Endowed School (with a sixth form) is on Chesterfield Road South (A617) and regularly used to beat both All Saints and Brunts school at Cricket, largely down to some lively paced bowling in the 1192-3 school season. None achieve particularly good results, with the Sherwood Hall School being the best of the lot. West Notts College is on Derby Road to the west of the town, heading towards Kirkby in Ashfield, and Garibaldi College complex is in Forest Town.

[edit] Local economy

There is a Morrisons on Sutton Road (A38) (originally the location of Mansfield Ambulance Service), two Tesco's, including a Tesco Extra in the Oak Tree Estate, which opened in December 2006, replacing the original Oak Tree Tescos, and a second standard format Tesco in the centre of town in Stockwell Gate, a Sainsburys (former Safeway) on Nottingham Road near the football ground and the Odeon Cinema Complex, and an Asda superstore on the Old Mill Lane ring-road in Forest Town to the east of the town, which was opened in 1998 and is the towns most popular shopping destination. The ASDA includes numerous departments, and recently went under refurbishment to expand both the George Clothing and the ASDA Home ranges in store. There are also several smaller supermarkets around the town, including Iceland, Marks and Spencers, Jacksons and Farmfoods, as well as a Tesco Metro. The local newspaper is the Chad. Local radio comes from Radio Nottingham on 95.5, 96 Trent FM 96 Trent FM and Mansfield 103.2.

[edit] Trivia

• Mark Holmes, lead singer of the Canadian New Wave/stadium rock group Platinum Blonde, was born and partly raised in Mansfield.[1]

• Mansfield used to have a carousel, just like its twin town, Mansfield, Ohio. The carousel was torn down for scrap metal during World War II. The one in Mansfield, Ohio still exists.

• In August 2005. Channel 4 showed a programme featuring the top 10 best and worst places to live in the UK. Mansfield came sixth in the worst. It is worth noting that Nottingham was judged the second worst place to live. The town's Executive Mayor took a delegation to the producers in London to argue the case for Mansfield. The producers would not meet the Mansfield delegation, although they claimed to prove that on the basis of the criteria applied to rank the towns and cities, Mansfield is a far more attractive place to live than Westminster in London.

• There used to be a Mansfield Brewery, but it was acquired by Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries for £253m in Oct-1999. The physical assets were later sold on to Pubmaster Ltd, while Wolverhampton & Dudley retained the rights to produce Mansfield brands. Before being sold, Mansfield Brewery was the largest independent brewer in the UK, at one point exporting to Russia and the USA. The site is now derelict however redevelopment is planned.

• Mansfield is a character in the Monty Python sketch "Woody words".

[edit] Twin towns

• Mansfield, Ohio, United States
• Mansfield, Massachusetts, United States
•  Ireland Mansfieldstown , Ireland
• Heiligenhaus, Germany
• Reutov, Russia
• Stryj, Ukraine

[edit] See also

• Mansfield Town F.C.
• Cantamus Girls Choir

[edit] External links

• Latest Mansfield news and shopping
• Mansfield's government site
• Mansfield's tourism site
• Mansfield's investment site
• Further info on local fishing and mill history
• St Marks church
• St Peters parish church

	Settlements on the A38, Derby to Mansfield	edit
Heading north: Derby | Darley Abbey | Horsley | Kilburn | Denby | Ripley | Swanwick | Alfreton | South Normanton | East Midlands Designer Outlet | Mansfield