Qualla: Mansfield

Mansfield: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willednic at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. Mansfield got its royal charter from Henry III in 1227, so the market has been running for nearly eight centuries. It sits in the valley of the River Maun, north of Nottingham, ringed by the remnants of what was once one of England's most concentrated coal-mining districts. For most of the twentieth century the headstocks at nearby Clipstone Colliery dominated the skyline; they are still there, listed and preserved, but the pits are gone. The town's identity is harder to summarise than the standard mining-town story suggests. Mansfield is also where George Fox first felt called to preach and started the Quakers, where the Bramley apple was first grafted, where Lord Mansfield's family connection runs through Jane Austen's novel, and where Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington trained as a child.

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Image: Willednic at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Mansfield: Royal Hunting and Royal Visitors

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit XXLRay, CC BY 3.0. Mansfield's name carries an argument. Historian William Horner Groves wrote in 1894 that it might come from a noble family who arrived with William the Conqueror, or from the Anglo-Saxon Manson meaning trade, or simply from the River Maun. Whatever the origin, by 1042 Edward the ...

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Image: XXLRay | CC BY 3.0

Mansfield: George Fox's Revelation

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MatthewDavid41, CC BY 4.0. George Fox walked past St Peter and St Paul's Church one day in 1647 and heard, as he later recorded in his journal, the Lord speaking to him: that which people do trample upon must be thy food. The steeple-house referred to was the medieval parish church mentioned in the Domesda...

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Image: MatthewDavid41 | CC BY 4.0

Mansfield: Coal, Cloth, and the Earl of Mansfield

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MatthewDavid41, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Industrial Revolution turned Mansfield into a textile and coal town. Robert Dodsley, born in 1704 and raised in Mansfield as a stocking weaver, escaped the loom by writing and editing, and went on to publish Samuel Johnson's London in 1738 and to suggest and underwrite Johnso...

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Image: MatthewDavid41 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mansfield: The Pits Close, the Pools Open

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MatthewDavid41, CC0. Coal mining was Mansfield's twentieth century. May Day 1984 saw a violent episode in the UK miners' strike here, and the town later hosted the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers, which split from the National Union of Mineworkers over the strike. As demand for coal fell, t...

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Image: MatthewDavid41 | CC0