Loscoe is a village near Heanor in

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

, England, lying within the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

of Heanor and Loscoe. It had prominent coalmines in the 19th and 20th centuries. Denby Common and Codnor Breach are hamlets on the western edge of the village.

History

The name Loscoe derives from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

words ''lopt'' and ''skógr'', as in ''lopt í skógi'', meaning "loft in a wood" or "wood with a loft house". It was recorded as ''Loscowe'' in 1277. Loscoe Manor formed part of the wider Draycott Estate; Richard and William de Draycott were recorded at Loscoe (or Loschowe) in 1401. The manor house was demolished in 1704. Loscoe's economy in the 19th and 20th centuries was dominated by coal mining: pit chimneys and slag heaps were prominent. Three mines operated: Old Loscoe (early 1830s – 1933), Bailey Brook (1847–1938) and Ormonde (1908–1970). Loscoe was in the ecclesiastical parish of Heanor until 1844, when a church was built between Loscoe and neighbouring Codnor to the north, and a joint parish created for them. Loscoe became a separate parish in 1927. Services were held in the mission church until a new parish church, dedicated to

St Luke Luke the Evangelist (Latin: '' Lucas''; grc, Λουκᾶς, '' Loukâs''; he, לוקאס, ''Lūqās''; arc, /ܠܘܩܐ לוקא, ''Lūqā’; Ge'ez: ሉቃስ'') is one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of t ...

, was completed in 1938.

Explosion

Loscoe was the site of a

landfill gas migration Landfill gas migration is a complex process in which gases produced by waste in a landfill move from the site of original deposition to other places via diffusion, usually from areas of high concentration to low. The process is also affected by t ...

explosion on 24 March 1986. Although there were no fatalities, one house was destroyed by the blast and its three occupants injured. The atmospheric pressure on the night of the explosion fell 29

hPa HPA may refer to: Organizations * Harry Potter Alliance, a charity * Halifax Port Authority, Canada * Hamburg Port Authority, Germany * Hawaii Preparatory Academy, a school in Hawaii, US * Health Protection Agency, UK * Heerespersonalamt, the Ger ...

(29

mbar The bar is a metric unit of pressure, but not part of the International System of Units (SI). It is defined as exactly equal to 100,000 Pa (100 kPa), or slightly less than the current average atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea leve ...

) over a seven-hour period, causing the gas to be released from the ground in much greater quantities than usual. In the four hours before the explosion at approximately 6.30 am, the local meteorological office had recorded average falls of 4 hPa (4 mbar) per hour. Several cubic metres of

landfill gas Landfill gas is a mix of different gases created by the action of microorganisms within a landfill as they decompose organic waste, including for example, food waste and paper waste. Landfill gas is approximately forty to sixty percent methane, ...

(consisting of a 3:2 mixture of

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Eart ...

and

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

) collected underground near the house at 51 Clarke Avenue, and as the gas expanded it flowed into the space beneath the floor, from where it was drawn by convection to the gas central-heating boiler and ignited. The incident led to the introduction of key British legislation and government guidance, with research into landfill behaviour and revised best practice at landfill sites. These moves were designed to vent gas into the atmosphere over time, then to burn off methane, and eventually in the most productive sites, to use gas turbines to turn the gas into electric power for the national grid.

Demography

In the 2011 census the

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to t ...

of Heanor and Loscoe (covering Loscoe and north-western parts of Heanor) had 2,285 dwellings, 2,216 households and a population of 5,335. The average age of residents was 40.5 (39.3 for England as a whole) and 17.9 per cent were aged 65 or over (16.4 per cent for England as a whole).

Governance

For representation within Heanor and Loscoe Town Council and Amber Valley Borough Council, Heanor and Loscoe civil parish is divided into three electoral wards: Heanor East, Heanor West and Heanor and Loscoe. In the May 2019 Parish Council elections, the Heanor and Loscoe Ward obtained seven seats, made up of four Labour and three Conservative candidates.

Notable resident

*BMX racer Dale Holmes was born here on 6 October 1971.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loscoe Villages in Derbyshire History of Derbyshire 1986 in England Gas explosions Explosions in England Explosions in 1986 Waste disposal incidents Geography of Amber Valley