Whaley Thorns is a former

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extra ...

village in the

Bolsover Bolsover is a market town and the administrative centre of the Bolsover District, Derbyshire, England. It is from Sheffield, from Nottingham and from Derby. It is the main town in the Bolsover district. The civil parish for the town is c ...

district of

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

, England, close to the

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 ...

border. Whaley Thorns lies just north of

Nether Langwith Nether Langwith is a village and civil parish, in the Bassetlaw District, Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England. It is located east of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield and south west of Worksop. Nether Langwith lies east of the ...

and Langwith, south-east of Creswell, and west of

Cuckney St Mary’s Church Norton/Cuckney, thumb Cuckney is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Norton, Cuckney, Holbeck and Welbeck, in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England, located between Worksop and Church Wa ...

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

of Langwith. The village takes its name from a dense wood, recorded on the first

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

Maps. "Whaley" being

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

for water/spring, referring to both the local springs, just to the north, and the

river Poulter The River Poulter which rises near Scarcliffe in Derbyshire, England is a tributary river of the River Idle in Nottinghamshire. It supplied power to mills along its route, most of which are now gone, although their mill ponds remain. Cuckney m ...

which lies only to the south. And "Thorn" an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

word, for wood. So the original meaning, may have been either "''Wood of the Springs''", or "''Wood above/between the water(s)''". In the Mid-nineteenth century, much of the wood was cut down, following the discovery of coal beneath it. Thanks to the nearby railway, the site soon grew into a

village. The village acquired both an

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

Chapel and a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

Chapel; both still hold regular services. It also acquired a large primary school, and later on in the 1940s, another school. In the late 1970s the chief employer, Langwith

, closed. Since then the first school closed and re-opened as a heritage centre and a re-education centre for ex-miners. The Second has remained open as a primary school. Following the Pit (Colliery) closure the villages' population greatly declined.

References

External links

Villages in Derbyshire Bolsover District {{Derbyshire-geo-stub