Mansfield
| Mansfield | |
|---|---|
 Mansfield marketplace | |
| OS grid reference | SK537610 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | MANSFIELD |
| Postcode district | NG18, NG19 |
| Dialling code | 01623 |
| Police | Nottinghamshire |
| Fire | Nottinghamshire |
| Ambulance | East Midlands |
| UK Parliament | |
Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the county, lying on the River Maun, from which the name of the town is derived.[1] It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. Mansfield is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area. The town is surrounded by a pocket of hills within the Maun Valley.
Economy
Mansfield has a large market square and, focused around the market, a large commercial centre including a museum, the Palace Theatre, and numerous pubs, bars and night clubs.
Mansfield was originally the home of Mansfield Brewery, once the largest independent brewer in the UK.[2] [3] The brewery was acquired by Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries for £253m in October 1999, with production of the Mansfield range of ales moving to other parts of the country. The brewery's physical assets were later sold on to Pubmaster Ltd, and the former site of the brewery is now derelict.In the 1980s it advertised Mansfield Bitter with a photograph of then US president Ronald Reagan and the tagline "He may be president of the most powerful nation on Earth but he's never had a pint of Mansfield","Not much matches Mansfield" was also used.
Several urban regeneration projects are underway in Mansfield, including reconstruction of the nearby Kings Mill Hospital.
Notable people
The television presenter Adam Kingswood (from BBC TVs The Truth About Property), Richard Bacon and professional golfers Oliver Wilson and Greg Owen come from Mansfield. The singer Alvin Stardust lived there as a child. Classical pianist John Ogdon was born in the suburb of Mansfield Woodhouse in 1937. Mark Holmes, lead singer of the Canadian New Wave/stadium rock group Platinum Blonde, was born and partly raised there.[4] Mansfield is also the home of the Cantamus Girls Choir, World Choir Olympics champions. As well as this it also features a thriving music scene with many promising up and coming young artists.
- James Perch - Nottingham Forest footballer
- Kris Commons - Derby County
- Nathan Arnold - Mansfield Town footballer
- Craig Disley - Bristol Rovers footballer
- Rebecca Adlington - 2008 Olympic swimming gold medalist, 400 m and 800m freestyle, the latter in a new world record time.
The ancestral home of Lord Byron, Newstead Abbey, is located not far away in Ravenshead.
Transport
Buses in Mansfield are primarily operated by Stagecoach, with Trent Barton, Veolia Transport (Dunn-Line) and Unity Coaches also operating in the area. 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. Planning permission has been given to develop a new bus station on the station road car park and is estimates to cost the region approx £7 million[5][6]. The bus station, built in 1977, handles around 1,500 buses and 16,000 passenger arrivals a day. It is the busiest bus station in the county outside the City of Nottingham, but does not offer an attractive waiting environment and has poor pedestrian links to the town centre. The new bus station is an attempt for redevelopment of the old bus station site to enhance Mansfield town centre, and to regenerate the whole of the Stockwell Gate area. Potential improvements could include a fully enclosed waiting area; automatic doors for comfort and safety, a tourist information centre, electronic bus and rail departure information, toilets and baby changing facilities, tower with lift and stairs to an elevated walkway connecting to the rail station and bus driver's facilities.
The town is the northern terminus of the A38, which runs from Bodmin in Cornwall and is the longest 'A' road entirely within England.
The town also has good road links. Mansfield can be reached within around 10 minutes from junctions 27,28 and 29 of the M1, and is situated around 18 miles from the A1 at neighbouring Newark-upon-Trent.
Mansfield railway station is a stop on the Robin Hood Line, a relatively new rail link connecting the town with Nottingham and Worksop. Before the introduction of the Robin Hood Line in the 1990s, Mansfield was the largest town in Europe without a railway station.[citation needed] - all the more remarkable because the town pioneered the railway in the East Midlands.
The town was originally the terminus of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway, built as a horse-drawn plateway in 1819 and one of the first acquisitions of the newly-formed Midland Railway. The Midland used the final section to extend its new Leen Valley line to the present station in 1849.
Thus, prior to the 1970s, the town had two railway stations: the LNER (former GNR) line on Great Central Road, near Ratcliffe Gate, and the LMSR (Former Midland) line on Station Road, near Belvedere Street. From the early 1950s, however, the LNER line ceased carrying passengers and remained as a freight only line; and in the 1970s the former LMSR line ceased to travel via Mansfield.
A tram service operated between 1905 and 1932, run by Mansfield & District Light Railways.
Sport
Mansfield is home to Mansfield Town, who are known as the Stags. They were relegated to the Conference National after 77 years in the Football League at the end of the 2007–08 season. The team's traditional rival is the nearby town of Chesterfield in Derbyshire. The rivalry between the two clubs is considered among the fiercest in the lower leagues. Some Yorkshire folk still associate Mansfield with failure to support the UK miners' strike (1984–1985); football matches between Mansfield Town: Barnsley, Rotherham United, and Doncaster Rovers have seen fans of the latter chant "scab".
Angling is well supported in the Mansfield district, where ponds remain from the former textile milling industry.
Mansfield is one of the three outlets of the Nottinghamshire County Council Swim Squad, who compete as Nova Centurion. The Sherwood Swimming Baths in Mansfield Woodhouse are, as of 2008, being refurbished and likely to re-open in 2009 as the Rebecca Adlington Swimming Centre in September 2009.
Entertainment
Palace Theatre
The Palace Theatre is located on Leeming Street and is the towns primary entertainment venue. Built as a cinema in 1910, it was originally known as the Palace Electric Theatre and was later adapted to a proscenium arch theatre presenting live shows. It has also been known as the Civic Hall and Civic Theatre before the current name was revived in the 1990s. With a seating capacity of 534, the theatre is a mid scale touring venue presenting a programme of both professional and amateur productions.
Intake Club
The Intake Club is a Carling Live music venue located on Kirkland Avenue in Mansfield town centre. The venue has three Bars and a gig room with a stage and capacity for 450 patrons. The full capacity of the Venue is 700. A number of leading bands have played at the club including Feeder, Deathstars, Fightstar, Witchfynde, Hayseed Dixie, Hardcore Superstar, Wishbone Ash, The Hamsters, John Parr and Vampires Rock and local bands including Rankin Steady, SkyRockers, RockMelon, Fall To Disgrace, Alone We Break and World Wide Waste. The club also hosts the annual CAMRA Mansfield Beer Festival.
Media
The local newspaper is the Chad (Formerly Chronicle Advertiser). Mansfield is home to one radio station, Mansfield 103.2 broadcast from the Fishpond's Hill transmitter on Skegby Lane which also broadcasts Mansfield versions of the Nottingham stations Radio Nottingham and 96 Trent FM on 95.5 and 96.5 FM respectively.
DAB broadcasts from Fishpond's Hill began on 21 July 2006 with the NOW Nottingham multiplex, subsequently the Digital One and BBC National muxes were also added (during 2006-07) to give excellent digital radio reception across the town.
Television reception in Mansfield however is a different story. Television reception has often been problematic due to the location of the town being in between regions. Historically Mansfield has always been part of the BBC North and Yorkshire Television region. Between 20 December 1965 and 31 December 1973 Mansfield was part of the Anglia Television region (until Belmont began transmitting Yorkshire Television)
However since the arrival of Diamond Cable (formerly ntl, and now Virgin Media) in 1995, BBC East Midlands and Central East were provided, and since regionalisation of SKY digital many residents can now watch BBC East Midlands and ITV Central East which are the default regions for this area and appear on channels 101 and 103.
The Belmont transmitter provides the best reception to most of the town offering analogue and digital TV, and is the most frequently used transmitter in the town providing BBC East Yorkshire & Lincolnshire and ITV Yorkshire (East)
Emley Moor is also receivable, and in some areas of the town offers better reception than Belmont, providing BBC Yorkshire & North Midlands and Yorkshire Television (West).
Whilst Yorkshire Television's news programme "Calendar" still covers Mansfield, BBC Look North has for many years refused to cover the town insisting that Mansfield belongs in the BBC East Midlands region (though few homes get acceptable terrestrial reception of BBC East Midlands).
Many homes do have dual aerials with one pointing at Belmont (or in some places Emley Moor) and the other at Waltham (East Midlands), the latter which usually gives a far inferior picture quality, but was often used in the days when ITV had more regional variations so that Mansfield folk could keep up with local news and sport. Dual aerial systems are largely being phased out as they will not work for reception of digital terrestrial TV in addition to the East Midlands variations being available through cable and satellite, but many still remain from the 1990s and late 1980s.
Other transmitters serving Mansfield include:
Emley Moor- BBC Yorkshire & Yorkshire (West)
Sutton Coldfield- BBC Midlands & Central (West) and
Bilsdale- BBC North East & Tyne Tees (South)
All three transmitters provide good signals across the town- in many cases providing superior reception to Waltham. With the correct aerial it is also possible to pick up Granada Television from Winter Hill, though the picture is usually very poor quality.
During an episode of CBBC's 'Dick n Dom in Da Bungalow', one of their games which consisted of sticking pictures of themselves on the backs of members of the public, was broadcast from Mansfield High Street.
Politics
Mansfield is notable for being one of the few towns in the United Kingdom with a directly-elected Mayor.
Alan Meale (born Joseph Alan Meale) has been the Labour constituent Member of Parliament since 1987. Prior to this, Mr. Meale had been a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.
Criticisms
D. H. Lawrence, in Lady Chatterley's Lover, described Mansfield as "that once romantic now utterly disheartening colliery town".[7]
The 2005 and 2007 editions of Channel 4's programme The Best and Worst Places to Live in the UK named Mansfield as the sixth and ninth worst place to live in Britain.[8]
Twin towns
Mansfield, Ohio, United States- Mansfield, Massachusetts, United States
Mansfieldtown, Ireland
Heiligenhaus, Germany
Reutov, Russia
Stryj, Ukraine
See also
References
- ^ [1]. Ashfield District Council site
- ^ Mansfield District Council Accessed 3 September 2008
- ^ [2]
- ^ The PLATINUM BLONDE Web Site
- ^ Mansfield bus station plans unveiled Nottinghamshire County Council 04 Dec 2006
- ^ New Mansfield bus station set for New Year joy? chad.co.uk 10 November 2007
- ^ Lawrence, D. H.: Lady Chatterley's Lover, Chapter 16. 1928.
- ^ BBC news story