Mansfield

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This page is about the town of Mansfield in England. For other places or persons named Mansfield, see Mansfield (disambiguation).

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Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire. 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 district.

There has been a permanent settlement at Mansfield since the year 70AD, and the town was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Around that time, Mansfield was the administrative camp of a defence force intended to repel attacks from Yorkshire, which was then still a separate and hostile nation. After the Norman Conquest, Mansfield took on a role as the capital of the Royal Forest of Sherwood. With some prescience, the great eighteenth century writer Daniel Defoe passed through Mansfield in 1725, noting only that:

"...I came to Mansfield, a market town but without remarkables." (A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724 - 1726)

The town has a museum and a theatre. Mansfield has a large market square and large commercial centre focusing around the market. The town has a population of 99,300 people. 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.

The area also has entertainment such as a cinema, swimming pool, and an exciting nightlife, with four nightclubs (Illusions, Coyote Wild, Liquid and The Late Lounge) and numerous pubs and bars. However Mansfield, which D.H. Lawrence described as "that once romantic now utterley disheartening colliery town" in Lady Chatterley's Lover until recently did not, apart from a small section in W H Smith, have a bookshop.

In Nottinghamshire, Mansfield is regarded with some disdain, being as it is a working class town with little in the way of culture or scenery. 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 here.

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, possibly a legacy of its close links to the now almost defunct coal mining industry.

1 Transport
2 Sport and education
3 Trivia
4 Twin towns
5 External links

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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 1970's 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 1950's the LNER line ceased carrying passengers and remained as a Freight only line. In the 1970's 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 Mansfielsd and Pinxton building, to serve the Robin Hood Line, which runs on a large viaduct over the town centre. Buses in Mansfield are primarily operated by Stagecoach, with trent barton, 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.

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Sport and education

Mansfield is home to the Football League club Mansfield Town F.C. as well as Mansfield Rugby Footbal union club. There is also a large sports college in Mansfield Woodhouse called the Manor School. The headmaster at the Manor school is Johnathan Hickman (http://www.themanor.notts.sch.uk/) (http://www.manor-sportscentre.co.uk)

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Trivia

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

In August 2005. Channel 4 showed a programme featuring the top 10 best & 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.

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