Worksop
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Infobox England place with map Worksop is a town in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England on the River Ryton at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. It is about 19 miles ESE of the City of Sheffield and its population is estimated (mid-2004) to be 39,800.
Worksop is known as the "Gateway to the Dukeries", so called for the number of ducal residences in the area. Clumber Park is a Large National Trust park open to the public. An important manufacturer in the town is Batchelors UK, which produces products such as Campbells Soup and Oxo. Wilkinsons Distribution Centre is also an important employer as well as the recenlty opened B&Q Distribuition Centre. The town is also home to Worksop College a co-educational day and boarding school. The local football team, Worksop Town F.C. play in the Conference North.
Famous people born in Worksop include Bruce Dickinson (singer in the heavy metal band Iron Maiden), John Parr - St. Elmo's Fire Donald Pleasence (actor), Graham Taylor (football manager), and Lee Westwood (golfer). Also born in Worksop was Neil Entwistle, a computer engineer accused of shooting dead his wife Rachel and their nine-month-old daughter Lillian at their home in Massachusetts in January 2006.
Contents |
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."Template:Ref
This early period of the town's history was humorously depicted in the children's television show, Maid Marian and her Merry Men, where it was largely portrayed as a mass of mud.
After the conquest, in about 1103, William de Lovetot established a castle and Augustinian priory at Worksop. Subsequently Worksop grew into a market town. 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 sizable coal seams further increased interest in the area. In recent years Worksop has been recognised as having a serious drugs problem attributed to the decline of coal mining in the early 1990s during the government of John Major. The member of parliament for Bassetlaw, John Mann, has fought a high-profile campaign to tackle the problem, once described as being at levels seen in inner cities.
See also
- Worksop College, a public school
- Worksop Priory, the Church of England parish church
- Worksop railway station, the railway station that serves the town
- Worksop Town F.C., the local football team
References and notes
- Template:Note White, Robert (1875) Worksop, The Dukery, and Sherwood Forest. Transcription at Nicholson, AP: Nottinghamshire History (Accessed 24 December 2005).