TOP 10 WEIRD HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT OUR DISTRICT
My blog is best known for local council scrutiny. This article is something different: no councils, no politics, just ten weird and interesting facts about different places in Bolsover District.
Why I’m writing article like that? Because S247 is well known, but only in Shirebrook. Recently I decided to turn my gaze toward Bolsover District Council and I think every resident of that area should have opportunity to see what BDC doing from independent point of view. I want to do to BDC what I did to STC. Full stop. I want people across the whole district, in Clowne, Bolsover, South Normanton and everywhere in between, to know that S247 is on their side exists.
To do it, I have to start somewhere, right? So why not try my push beyond borders of Shirebrook by writing article that could be interesting to every resident of Bolsover District.
If you like what you read, follow the S247 fanpage on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shirebrook247. I only post links to new articles and information relevant to residents of our district. No spam.
INDEPENDENT
In case you haven’t noticed, my blog has no adverts and no sponsors. Nobody can buy an article or flattering coverage. I’m not a grifter, I’m a dreamer. I write about what I think matters, and sometimes, just for practice and fun, about something completely different and wacky. What is life without a little bit of craziness, right?
ONE LAST THING
I made all the illustrations myself with the help of Midjourney AI. None of these pictures are real; they sit above each chapter just to brighten up the text. Anyway, without further ado, here are ten things about Bolsover District that most people have never heard of.
1. BEATRIX POTTER OWNED A MUG MADE IN PINXTON 
Pinxton is rather remembered because coal and its coal museum, but between 1796 and 1813, Pinxton made porcelain that ended up in serious collections. The factory was set up by John Coke and William Billingsley, a brilliant and restless flower painter from Derby (google him- his plates looks pristine). Billingsley stayed only three years and the factory never made much money, so genuine Pinxton pieces are rare and…costly. Single mug on E-bay can reach price of 170 pounds. I saw one 29-0 pounds. One cup! Like wage of working class man. That is bonkers, right?
One of those mugs painted with roses by Billingsley himself, sat in the sitting room of Beatrix Potter’s house, Hill Top, in the Lake District. It’s still in the National Trust collection there today.
2. A LADY, A FOREST AND A BELL THAT STILL RINGS 
Inside St Leonard’s Church in Scarcliffe lies a stone effigy of a woman cradling a child, known as Lady Constantia. Legend says she and her baby were lost in the forest one night and found their way to safety by following the sound of the church bell. In gratitude, she left land to the church so the curfew bell would be rung forever. Historians still argue about who she really was. Scarcliffe doesn’t seem bothered: allegedly the curfew bell is still rung every evening for about three weeks either side of Christmas (couldn’t confirm that in more than one source).
3. SHE PUT HER INITIALS ON THE ROOF. SIX TIMES. 
Hardwick Hall was built in the 1590s by Bess of Hardwick, one of the richest and most formidable women in Elizabethan England. Glass was a luxury, so she filled the walls with huge windows, which gave us the old rhyme “Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall”. To make room for them, the chimneys were moved into the internal walls. And in case anyone forgot whose house it was, all six towers carry her initials, ES, in stone. Personal branding, 400 years before Instagram. Of course my picture is fake so if you want to see those enormous windows- you need to google them or go there. Enjoy! Hardwick Hall is one of most famous Halls from that era in England.
4. THE MAN WHO COULDN’T WRITE BUT COULD SQUARE A 39-DIGIT NUMBER 
Jedediah Buxton was born in Elmton, near Creswell, in 1707. He never learned to write, yet he became one of the most famous mental calculators in English history. He measured the whole of Elmton just by walking it, then worked out the area in square inches, and then in hair’s breadths. He once spent about two months squaring a 39-digit number entirely in his head. When he was taken to see the great actor David Garrick play Richard III in London, he didn’t follow the plot. He counted the words. Elmton gave him a blue plaque in 2011.
This numbers-gifted person could be very helpful today– to calculate tax increases in Elmton and Creswell…
5. A HORSE, FIVE POUNDS AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
Another Jedediah (the district clearly liked the name): Jedediah Strutt was born into a farming family in South Normanton in 1726. The story goes that he sold a horse to pay £5 for someone else’s unfinished idea for knitting ribbed stockings. He and his brother-in-law turned it into the “Derby Rib” machine, patented in 1759, and the stockings sold like mad. Strutt went on to become Richard Arkwright’s partner at Cromford, then built his own mills at Belper. Not bad for a farmer’s lad from South Normanton.
6. THE CAVES WHERE TWO KINDS OF ARTISTS LEFT THEIR MARK 
Creswell Crags, the limestone gorge on the Derbyshire–Nottinghamshire border by Creswell, holds the only known Ice Age rock art in Britain: engravings of animals around 13,000 (!!!) years old, recognised in 2003. That alone would be enough. But in 2019 the caves gave up a second secret: hundreds of protective “witch marks”, carved between the 1500s and 1800s by local people trying to keep evil out. It’s the biggest collection of its kind ever found in the UK. The best part? Visitors had walked past them for years. They were only noticed when two sharp-eyed enthusiasts on an ordinary tour looked twice.
That cave and its paintings is weird prof that graffiti artist existed before any other artists.
7. THE TOWN THAT SOUNDS LIKE A CIRCUS ACT 
First thing every outsider learns about Clowne: the “e” is silent. It’s pronounced “Clown”. It has nothing to do with the circus although, they have BDC HQ so… Anyway, in the Domesday Book it was written “Clune”, probably from an old Celtic word for a river. In the 1830s this village, nowhere near the sea, had a small factory making sail-cloth. And deep underground there’s a coal seam called the Clown seam. Shirebrook Colliery drove a tunnel to it in the late 1970s.
If you ever wonder why BDC decided to locate their HQ in Clowne- that should be your answer: clowns.
8. FROM 600 PEOPLE TO 7,000 IN FIVE YEARS 
Shirebrook’s name probably means “boundary brook” (or possibly “bright brook”), which fits a town sitting right next to the Nottinghamshire border. As late as the 1870s it was little more than an offshoot of Pleasley (how the table turns, right?). Then the colliery shafts were sunk in 1896, and the place exploded: from under 600 people to nearly 7,000 by 1901. Housing couldn’t keep up, so newcomers from as far away as Cornwall lived in tents and old navvies’ huts in the fields while the Model Village went up. And the brook that gave the town its name? It was put underground. It’s still down there.
BDC recently announced plan to build over 2000 homes in Shirebrook. Looks like Shirebrook have experience in massive and uncontrolled growth that overwhelm local infrastructure…
9. THE MOST EXPENSIVE PARTY THIS DISTRICT EVER THREW
In 1634, King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria came to Bolsover Castle. Their host, William Cavendish, had the playwright Ben Jonson write a masque for the occasion, ‘Love’s Welcome at Bolsover’, performed in the Fountain Garden. According to the biography later written by his second wife, the visit cost him between £14,000 and £15,000. That’s 1630s money. If you use the National Archives currency converter that sum in today’s money is… 2 000 000 pounds :O That must have been wild party!
Cavendish was also obsessed with horses: the Riding House he built in the 1660s is one of the earliest in England to survive complete. Horses are back there today.
10. THE CASTLE I HAVE NEVER VISITED 
Now the weirdest fact on this list, and it’s about me. I moved to District almost 15 years ago. When I was looking for a home away from the big cities, Bolsover was on my shortlist. I drove into town, saw the castle on the hill and, being a history buff, immediately promised myself I’d go in and read everything about it and then visit it. Since then I’ve passed that castle more than a thousand times. For a few years it was literally on my way to work. I’ve visited more historic sites around England than I can count. But Bolsover Castle, one of the most spectacular of them all, sitting right above the M1? Never been inside. I honestly don’t know why. Maybe this article is my way of finally buying a ticket.
THE END
Ten facts, zero controversy (hopefully- my last ‘non-controversial’ article attracted crowds of outrage people. It was about… statue. Eh, some people just like to feel outraged, right?). You’ve just read the most harmless article ever published on Shirebrook247. Enjoy it, because it won’t happen often. If you want to help to spread news about my blog- all you have to do is hit ‘share’ or ‘like’. It cost nothing but helps non-profit creators like me a lot.
That said, compiling this list was genuinely fun, and ten facts barely scratch the surface. I didn’t even get to the stately home whose rooms ended up in a museum on the other side of the Atlantic, or the pit where the old steam winding engines still stand.
If you know more weird facts about your corner of the district, share them under the post on Facebook. If there are enough, I’ll write part two. A vanilla one, obviously.
Next article? Super serious. I promise…
Sylwester Zwierzynski info@shirebrook247.com
All illustrations made with Midjourney AI.
