Ollerton and Boughton is a

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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

Newark and Sherwood Newark and Sherwood is a Non-metropolitan district, local government district in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest district by area in the county. The council is based in Newark-on-Trent, the area's largest town. The district also incl ...

district of

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

, England. The main settlements are the village of

Ollerton Ollerton is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Ollerton and Boughton, in the Newark and Sherwood district, in the county of Nottinghamshire, England, on the edge of Sherwood Forest in the area known as the Dukeries. The p ...

and the town of New Ollerton and Boughton. The civil parish was formed in 1996, when the civil parishes of Ollerton and Boughton were merged. The population of the civil parish at the time of the 2011 census was recorded as 9,840, and this increased to 11,089 residents at the 2021 census.

New Ollerton

The history of the building of New Ollerton can be traced between 1922 and 1932 built by the Butterley Company between Ollerton Hall and the New Plough Public House and cemetery. 175px, left, St Paulinus Church, New Ollerton New Ollerton was greatly expanded towards the small hamlet of Boughton as Ollerton became a colliery village in the mid-1920s. New Ollerton was once acclaimed in the Spectator magazine as 'an admirable industrial housing scheme' – also known as a '

model village A model village is a mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. "Model" implies an ideal to which other developments could aspire. Although the villages ...

'. Miners enjoyed a high standard of living, with semi-detached houses, large gardens and hot water supplied directly from Ollerton Colliery.

Boughton

Boughton (pronounced 'Booton') is recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

and has had a varied history: it has played host to Viking invaders and Italian and German prisoners of war, and at one stage formed part of the vast Rufford Estate. Originally a small hamlet centred on St Matthew's Church, farming was the main occupation until the 1930s, when the face of Boughton began to change dramatically. The sinking of Ollerton Colliery and the housing stock that followed means that today the boundary between New Ollerton and Boughton can be difficult to recognise. A noted architectural feature of the area is the listed Edwardian Boughton Pumping Station, which formerly supplied over three million gallons of clean water each day to homes in the

city of Nottingham Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located south-east of Sheffield and nor ...

Ollerton Village

Ollerton, originally known as Alreton or Allerton, meaning 'farm among the alders', is situated at the crossroads of the York to London, Worksop to Newark, and Lincoln to Mansfield roads. Due to its location, in medieval times Ollerton became a meeting place for forest officials, commissioners and Justices of the Peace, leading to the development of its two coaching inns, The White Hart and The Hop Pole. For many years, the main occupation in Ollerton was hop growing – there were hop fields along the

River Maun The River Maun is a river in Nottinghamshire, England. Its source lies in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, and from there it flows north east through Mansfield (which takes its name from the river), Edwinstowe and Ollerton, these being the heart of the She ...

from as early as 1691 and a weekly hop market was held in the town on Fridays. left, Ollerton Village The Markhams, a land owning family, were highly influential in the town's development. They built and lived in Ollerton Hall and the story of their life during the Civil War is immortalised in a book by Elizabeth Glaister. Throughout the centuries,

watermill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as mill (grinding), milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in ...

s have played an important part of life in Ollerton; today the only working watermill in Nottinghamshire can be found in the village, built in 1713 on the same spot as one of those listed in the Domesday Book.

Amenities

There is a small high street in New Ollerton with shops including a post office, chemist, and grocery stores. There is also a shopping area on Sherwood Drive which includes charity shops and an indoor market. This is also the home of the Town Hall and Lifespring Centre, a local charitable community venue and cafe. There are local churches including Lifespring Church, St Paulinus and the Methodist Church which also acts as the local food bank. 200px, Forest Road, New Ollerton There is an

Army Cadet Force The Army Cadet Force (ACF), generally shortened to Army Cadets, is a national Youth organisations in the United Kingdom, youth organisation sponsored by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence and the Bri ...

and a community band. The town has two supermarkets.

History

The Industrial Revolution and events

From the 1920s onwards the main industry was

coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

with Ollerton expanding greatly during the 1960s and 1970s, having the name New Ollerton. The colliery was sunk in the 1920s and completed during the General Strike of 1926, which led to a saying of "Ollerton was ever built with

scab labour A strikebreaker (sometimes pejoratively called a scab, blackleg, bootlicker, blackguard or knobstick) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers may be current employees ( union members or not), or new hires to keep the orga ...

". The coal mine was established and funded by the

Butterley Company The Butterley Company was an English manufacturing firm founded as Benjamin Outram and Company in 1790. Its subsidiaries existed until 2009. Origins This area of Derbyshire had been known for its outcrops of iron ore which had been exploited at ...

, having an historic base of coal and

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

mining in nearby Derbyshire; they created a

in Ollerton for the colliery higher management and workers. A hosiery factory was established in 1937 to provide work for the miners' wives.Model Villages of the Nottinghamshire Coalfield. Ollerton, Guidebook 9
"''New Ollerton became one of the largest model villages in the Dukeries with approximately 932 houses by the Second World War. The housing at New Ollerton is very similar to Butterley's accommodation at Kirkby in Ashfield and was built by a company from the same town, Messrs Coleman and Blackburn''". Miner2Major via

Nottinghamshire County Council Nottinghamshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Nottinghamshire in England. The non-metropolitan county is smaller than the ceremonial county; the non-metropolitan county excludes the city of ...

. Retrieved 1 February 2024 During the expansion of the pit, many miners from closed collieries in north-eastern England and Scotland moved to work at Ollerton. There was a large Polish community amongst the miners at Ollerton, estimated to make up roughly half the workforce at the time of the 1984-1985 strike. Ollerton Colliery was considered one of the most

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

pits in Nottinghamshire, and was subject to heavy picketing at the time of the ballot by the Nottinghamshire branch of the National Union of Mineworkers in March 1984. A miner from Ackton Hall Colliery, near

Featherstone Featherstone is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the City of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, two miles south-west of Pontefract. Historic counties of England, Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 2011 ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...

died at Ollerton when

picketing Picketing is a form of protest in which people (called pickets or picketers) congregate outside a place of work or location where an event is taking place. Often, this is done in an attempt to dissuade others from going in (" crossing the pi ...

during the

miners' strike The following is a list of miners' strikes. Miners' strikes are when miners conduct strike actions. See also *List of strikes *History of coal mining in the United States References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miners' strikes Miners' labor disputes, ...

on 15 April 1984. David Gareth Jones was hit in the neck by a brick thrown by a local youth when he was picketing,Mullins, Helen ''Chad'' (Mansfield local newspaper), 18 March 2009, p.8 ''Miners' Strike 25th Anniversary'', interview with Mark Jones. Accessed 2014-11-21 but the post-mortem ruled that it had not caused his death and that it was more likely to have been caused by being pressed against the pit gates earlier in the day. News of his death led to hundreds of pickets staying in Ollerton town centre overnight. At the request of Nottinghamshire Police,

Arthur Scargill Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, a major event in the history o ...

appeared and called for calm in the wake of the tragedy. However, several working miners in Ollerton reported that their gardens and cars had been vandalised during the night. A memorial bench was sited near the spot where David died. As a mark of respect for Jones, Ollerton Colliery closed for a few days afterwards.

Regeneration

Ollerton Hall which came into disrepair is now being renovated. Ollerton Hall was purchased by Newark and Sherwood District Council for renovation. The hall will now become 8 apartments. The Ollerton regeneration project 2023 plans to transform New Ollerton which aims to deliver a state-of-the-art library, boutique cinema and residential, retail and hospitality spaces from the levelling up funds from the UK Government. The plans have been put into place by Newark and Sherwood District Council.

The history of regeneration

The mine closed in 1994, losing around 1,000 jobs. A group of locals including past colliery workers had a vision to try to establish a new facility that would – at least – provide as many new jobs as were lost. A non-profit organisation run by 10 trustees was established to raise "...just under £50,000" to purchase the 125-

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

colliery footprint from

British Coal The British Coal Corporation was a nationalised corporation responsible for the mining of coal in the United Kingdom from 1987 until it was effectively dissolved in 1997. The corporation was created by renaming its predecessor, the National Co ...

. A further £4.25 million was needed to reclaim and clean up the land, which was redeveloped as an ecologically sustainable business park of commercial offices occupying 40-acres, named ''Sherwood Energy Village''. Key-tenants, including Center Parcs and

, were responsible for creating their own buildings, with an emphasis on low-energy consumption by using advanced materials and technology including ground source heat pumps. Included into the layout was a nearby Tesco superstore. The original development organisation failed in 2010 and went into administration, citing difficult trading conditions after the worldwide

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

, having created 500 more jobs than the original 1,000 target, and having been awarded the inaugural ''Enterprising Britain Award'' in 2005."Energy village dream is over at Ollerton". ''Chad'', 25 August 2010, p.2. Retrieved 14 July 2023

References

{{Reflist

External links

{{Commons category
Information about the areaOllerton & Boughton Town Council
homepage {{coord, 53.2058, N, 1.0078, W, source:wikidata, display=title{{Gallery , File:St. Matthews Church - geograph.org.uk - 579408.jpg, St Matthew’s Church, Boughton , File:Forest Road shops New Ollerton - geograph.org.uk - 607862.jpg, Forest Road shopping, Ollerton , File:Sherwood Energy Village HQ, Ollerton - geograph.org.uk - 293228.jpg, A building in the Sherwood Energy Village development {{Nottinghamshire, state=expanded Newark and Sherwood Civil parishes in Nottinghamshire