Forest Town is a former mining village on the outskirts of

Mansfield Mansfield is a market town and the administrative centre of Mansfield District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the wider Mansfield Urban Area (followed by Sutton-in-Ashfield). It gained the Royal Charter of a market tow ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

, England. After continuous development it is no longer a separate entity, nowadays being simply an area within Mansfield. An old part of Forest Town known as ''The Avenues'' is the high-density housing built as homes for the workers from the nearby ''Crown Farm Colliery'' (also known as 'Mansfield Colliery'), once a major employer. After closure of the coal mine in early 1988, the site has gradually been transformed to accommodate manufacturing in a variety of units on an industrial estate. A nearby development was the fabric manufacturing factory built on ''heathland'' by the Japanese organisation

Toray is a multinational corporation headquartered in Japan that specializes in industrial products centered on technologies in organic synthetic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and biochemistry. Its founding business areas were fibers and textiles, ...

. This occurred amidst much publicity – with Toray stating during local recruitment in three phases, 1992–93 that their mission was to become Mansfield's finest Corporate Citizen. By the 2000s the size of the workforce had been considerably reduced. The manufacturing processes abstract large-volumes of underground fresh water from nearby bore-holes and discharge foul water into the local sewer system operated by

Severn Trent Water Severn Trent plc is a water company based in Coventry, England. It supplies 4.6 million households and business across the Midlands and Wales. It is traded on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Severn Trent, the ...

. The B6030 main road through Forest Town has small shops, a post office, a small supermarket, with the Miners' Welfare, sports ground and

cycle track A cycle track, separated bike lane or protected bike lane (sometimes historically referred to as a sidepath) is an exclusive bikeway that has elements of a separated path and on-road bike lane. A cycle track is located within or next to the ro ...

just behind, opposite to St Alban's Church. The

Samworth Church Academy The Samworth Church Academy is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form with academy status, located in Mansfield in the English county of Nottinghamshire. History The school was established as "The Mansfield Secondary Technical School", ...

(formerly known as Sherwood Hall) is the nearest secondary school and The Garibaldi School further out in

Clipstone Clipstone in north Nottinghamshire is a small ex-coal mining village built on the site of an old army base and close to the site of a medieval royal palace. The population of the civil parish was 3,469 at the 2001 census, increasing to 4,665 a ...

are within the normal catchment area. The area was split into two

wards Ward may refer to: Division or unit * Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward * Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...

, Forest Town East and West but following the re-organisation implemented by Mayor

Tony Egginton Tony Egginton (born 1951) was the first directly elected Mayor of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, England. He was elected to the position on 17 October 2002, beating Labour's Lorna Carter by 588 votes, ending 30 years of Labour control. Egginton ...

in time for the 2011 elections, Forest Town now falls within four ward areas; the main sections are within ''Holly'', ''Kingsway'' and ''Newlands'', whilst a smaller area encroaches into Maun Valley. In 1998, William and Patricia Wycherley were murdered by their daughter and son-in-law, Susan and Christopher Edwards. They were buried in the back garden of their home in Forest Town and laid undiscovered until October 2013. At the 2001 census, the population of these wards was 11,194, rising to 11,812 at the 2011 census, although it was only 8,288 using older boundary data. Local football club

A.F.C. Mansfield A.F.C. Mansfield is a football club based in Forest Town, a suburb of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England. Nicknamed 'The Bulls', they are currently members of the and play at the Forest Town Arena. History A.F.C. Mansfield was formed in Ju ...

play at the Forest Town Stadium. St Alban's Church, Forest Town - geograph

References

{{authority control Villages in Nottinghamshire Mansfield