Pinxton is a village and

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 below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

on the eastern boundary of

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 trad ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, just south of the Pinxton Interchange at Junction 28 of the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which ...

where the A38 road meets the M1. Pinxton is part of the Bolsover District and at the 2011 Census had a population of 5,699. "Pinxton CCTV level crossing", located on the up and down Kirkby lines, is a major tourist attraction for train enthusiasts who come from all over the country to take photographs of some of the unique locomotives that pass over the crossing.

History

Etymology

In Anglo-Saxon times, Pinxton was a small agricultural community, thought to have been 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 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086 as "Esnotrewic." It is also thought that it was known as "Snodeswic," given by Wulfric Spott to

Burton Abbey Burton Abbey at Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, England, was founded in the 7th or 9th century by St Modwen or Modwenna. It was refounded in 1003 as a Benedictine abbey by the thegn Wulfric Spott. He was known to have been buried in the abbey ...

. In Norman times, along with a number of other manors, it was under the control of William Peveril, for whom it was held by Drogo fitz Pons. It is thought that he renamed the manor "Ponceston" and it gradually changed to Penekeston and then to Pinxton.

Coal

Since 1800 BC,

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

had been extracted in the area. In 1794 the Cromford Canal encouraged this trade. By the beginning of the next century there were a number of deep coal mines. Trade increased with the growth of the

industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. There were also four lime kilns and a china works producing quality ware. Pinxton's prosperity increased further as the terminus, in 1819, of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway opened. From the profits of his colliery at Pinxton, D'Ewes Coke (1747-1811) of Brookhill Hall, a

clergy Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...

man colliery master, founded a local school and an educational charity. The collieries and coking ovens have been replaced by an industrial estate, and the old colliery village has all but disappeared.

John King

John King is the inventor of a mining safety device, a detaching hook, which successfully completed trials in 1873 at Pinxton No.1 colliery. The detaching hook prevents a cage raising miners from a shaft from being raised up and over the headstock pulley when raised from a mine shaft. A mining museum in Pinxton honoring John King and commemorating the invention of the detaching hook was closed in 2014 and its contents distributed to other museums and heritage centres. In Pinxton today, there remains the John King mining Wheel, It was used in the days when mining was available. Now the John King wheel is a historical model for the public to see and also the name of a school in Pinxton. The horse gin, or whim from Pinxton Green Colliery has been re-erected at Nottingham Industrial MuseumInterpretative Board, Gin Yard, Nottingham Industrial Museum Pinxton Signal box, which once controlled access to Bentinck Colliery has been relocated to Barrow Hill Engine Shed.

Church

The church of St Helen dates from medieval times, possibly having been built on the site of a previous small castle. Much of it was rebuilt in 1790 reusing the original materials, and only the west tower and west end of the old church remains. By 1890, it was so dilapidated that most of the services were held in the mission room. In the following century it was repaired, and a new porch and north aisle were added in 1939.

Broadmeadows

Broadmeadows is a housing estate in the Pinxton parish, built in the 1980s.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Derbyshire Bolsover District Lime kilns in the United Kingdom