Mansfield (/ˈmænzˌfiːld/) is a market town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district and is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area. Nestling in a pocket within the Maun Valley surrounded by hills, the town is around 12 miles (19 km) north of Nottingham. The district of Mansfield is a largely urban area situated in the north west of Nottinghamshire populated by 99,600 residents, the vast majority of whom live in Mansfield (including Mansfield Woodhouse), with Market Warsop a secondary centre, and the remainder in the rural north of the district. Adjacent to the urban area of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Mansfield is the only major sub-regional centre in Nottinghamshire covering an area of 30 square miles (78 sq km). The Centre for Cities (2009) categorises the town as a ‘small city’, although it does not officially hold city status.
Mansfield is the only local authority area in the county to have a directly elected Mayor and in October 2008 Mansfield elected its first Youth Mayor.
Historically, the district has been influenced heavily by its industrial past with coal mining and textiles thriving in the district until their decline in the 1990s, but in common with the national economy the area has seen the decline of these sectors. Mansfield has 20.2% (12,890) of its working age population seeking key out of work benefits (based on a 63,800 total working age population) (NOMIS).
Over the last century the population has declined in parallel with this traditional industrial base. However much has been done to diversify the economic base and to replace jobs lost. Mid-year population forecasts reveal that since April 2008 the population has gone from 100,100 to 100,600 in 2009, 99,700 in 2010 to the current figure of 99,600 in 2011.
In August 2014, the council announced its first tenants at the 2.4 million pound development offering two retail areas and six offices – three staffing agencies and a cafe/takeaway. On top of undisclosed rental, businesses will need to pay business rates, VAT, a service charge on communal areas and a 2% levy on its rateable value to Mansfield BID. In contrast, the council proposes to allow Mansfield BID, if voted-in for continuation from 2015, to use nearby office accommodation “free of charge…which is estimated as an in kind contribution equivalent to £4,000 per annum”.
In September 2014, MP Sir Alan Meale again openly criticised the council for spending such an amount on a new build when other council-owned properties were run-down, and for ignoring his 50-point plan, further urging the council to abandon its office complex on Chesterfield Road in favour of relocating to the underused Town Hall in the town centre. It then emerged that only the cafe was a new business to Mansfield town centre, with the office tenants of Queen’s Place simply relocating from nearby premises. In late 2015, the second of the two ground-floor units, empty for two years since completion in 2013, was occupied by a diner-style ice-cream parlour.
Mansfield has many retail outlets and a large indoor shopping centre called Four Seasons having over 50 units with many popular national UK shops such as Boots, Debenhams, Burton, Thomas Cook, The Perfume Shop, HMV, Primark, the bookstore W.H. Smith and several phone shops. There is one large store – formerly a Co-op, now known as Beales.
Marks and Spencer and Dorothy Perkins are traditional key stores in West Gate with nearby Costa Coffee from 2011, in addition to several existing similar cafes. The economic crisis from 2008 led to some shops closing and being boarded up, or their windows covered with poster images resembling library, cafe, pub or other shop scenes. The effect of the downturn was not as bad as many cities and towns throughout the United Kingdom. Nearby Chesterfield suffered worse than Mansfield (for a similar sized town). The vacant properties are less than 11% compared to some places which are as high as 25%. There are still independent town centre shops, such as Xibit Jewellery, Vivid Shoes, MCS (Mansfield Computer Store) and other small family businesses mixed within the high street names.
Mansfield railway station is a stop on the Robin Hood Line, a rail link connecting the town with Nottingham and Worksop. From 1964 until the opening of the line in 1995, Mansfield was, by some definitions, the largest town in Britain without a railway station, all the more remarkable because the town pioneered the railway in the East Midlands. From 1973 to 1995 the nearby station at Alfreton was named ‘Alfreton and Mansfield Parkway’ to encourage its use as a railhead for Mansfield. A Sunday rail service was restored to Mansfield in December 2008 – the town having been one of the largest on the rail network without one.
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.
The Midland Railway extended its Rolleston Junction – Southwell branch to Mansfield in 1871, continued the line north of Mansfield to Worksop in 1875, opened a link from Mansfield Woodhouse to Westhouses & Blackwell in 1886, and completed another link from Pleasley through Bolsover to Barrow Hill in 1890. Mansfield had become a railway centre of some importance, but it was a Midland Railway centre.
The Midland Railway monopoly was broken by the locally promoted Mansfield Railway between Kirkby South Junction and Clipstone Junctions opened in stages between 1913 and 1916 for goods trains and in 1917 for Nottingham – Ollerton passenger trains calling at a second Mansfield passenger station. Although nominally independent, the Mansfield Railway connected with the Great Central Railway at both ends and trains were worked by the Great Central.
Thus Mansfield had two railway stations: Mansfield Town, the former Midland station on Station Road, near Belvedere Street and Mansfield Central, the former Mansfield Railway station on Great Central Road, near Ratcliffe Gate. Central station lost its scheduled passenger services at the beginning of 1956 and Town station closed to passengers in 1964 leaving Mansfield without any passenger trains until the Robin Hood line restored the service in 1995.
Mansfield has many parks and green spaces. Titchfield Park, located on the same site as the Water Meadows swimming complex, offers large grassy areas on both sides of the river Maun, crossed by two foot bridges. The park boasts a bowls green, hard tennis courts, basketball court, children’s play area and many flowerbeds which are filled with blooms during the summer months.
Fisher Lane Park, located nearby stretching from the top of Littleworth through to Rock Hill, is a green space popular with dog walkers, kite flyers and skaters, since Mansfield District Council installed a concrete skate plaza, causing some controversy with locals.
However, the skate plaza has proven to be very popular with local youths, who access it daily. During the summer months, small fairs use Fisher Lane Park to set up some rides and stalls for local children.
Carr Bank Park is another park close to the town, which has a rocky ‘grotto’, bandstand and many flower beds, which are filled with blooms during the summer. The park has a new war memorial built of local sandstone dedicated to those who were killed in action since the end of the Second World War, to compliment the original setting unveiled after the First War in 1921.