The Great Northern former-pub, once a frequent social point in Shirebrook, converted in 2016 to an alcohol-free homeless shelter for a maximum of 15 men as an outpost-mission by Lighthouse Homes, a church project originally based in Rotherham[2][3][4]
According to David Mills in A Dictionary of British Place-Names,[7] the area was first named in records in 1202 written in Old English as Scirebroc. This can be interpreted as Boundary or Bright Brook.
Prior to the intense and swift development of the Colliery at the turn of the 20th century, Shirebrook, even as late as 1872 it was little more than a chapelry of the larger Pleasley. Wilsons' Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870–72[8] describes "SHIREBROOK, a chapelry in Pleaseley parish, Derby; 3¾ miles NNW of Mansfield r. station. It was constituted in 1849, and it has a post-office under Mansfield. Pop., 342. Houses, 70. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value, £90.* Patron, the Rector of Pleaseley. The church was built in 1843."
Shirebrook Colliery was sunk in 1896–1897 by the Shirebrook Coal and Iron company[9] on land owned by the Duke of Devonshire, Joseph Paget (a Pleasley Mills partner and the builder of Stuffynwood Hall), and the Nicholson and Fowler farming families. Professor Arnold Lupton of Sheffield was the mining engineer. The sinking of two shafts, plus a pumping shaft, was based on independent surveys by Henry Hall and Matthew Fisher, managers of working collieries. The shafts, 19 feet (5.8 m) wide, met the 'Top Hard' seam at 430 yards (390 m).
By 1897, a 'model village' was already being built close to the colliery to house workers. The Derbyshire Times of 30 July 1897 reported that "About half a mile away a model village is springing up, some 150 houses have already been erected and about 420 are to be built."
Former Shirebrook Colliery
Shirebrook Colliery operated in the town until April 1993. It had previously been linked underground to nearby Pleasley Colliery.[10] The workforce was about evenly split during the strike of 1984–85, leading to deep community divisions between strikers and workers, and briefly earned the nickname "the Belfast of England".[11]
In addition to two ongoing fabrication-engineering businesses at nearby Langwith, Shirebrook has a large furniture retailer.
Re-titled as Brook Park, half of the entire business park designated as Zone 1 was allocated to Sports Direct after a planning application to Bolsover District Council in 2004 for four giant warehouses totalling 111,000 square metres, with a training facility, helipad and a retail store.[12][13][14]
Sports Direct complex in 2007
Community building
In December 2017, the government through their Minister for Faith and Communities, Lord Bourne, announced a £1.26 million aid-package from the Controlling Migration Fund, after a bid from local networking groups Bolsover Partnership and Shirebrook Forward NG20 due to the large influx of Eastern European workers.
The money is a two-year investment intended to improve access to public services, stage community events, improve the shopping and Market Square area and ease pressures on housing, schooling and health services resulting from recent migration.
The project named Building Resilience will see investment into seven core areas:[15]
Community resilience
Market Square Enlivenment
Migrant community access
Improve access and quality of private sector housing
Social Norms and UK Laws
Additional GP resources
Healthy Workforce Programme
Shirebrook Town Hall was constructed as a new build on the site of a former storage unit on the market square. It opened in 2019 as a 'one stop shop' with customer contact centre and payment counter at ground floor level, and offices for Town Council and Bolsover District business above.[16][17] The council's claim is "...we believe it to be one of the largest, if not the largest town centre square in England".[18]
Housing
As part of the government's Levelling Up initiative, a plan to create affordable homes on part of the former colliery site has seen the First Homes pilot scheme established to allow local first-time buyers and key workers to buy new builds at a 30% discount of the market price.[19][20][21]
Education
Shirebrook Academy on Common Lane is the local secondary school for pupils aged 11–16.
Shirebrook also has many primary schools and nurseries such as:
The town is served by the local newspapers the Mansfield and Ashfield Chad and the Derbyshire Times.[25][26]
Railway
Shirebrook once had three railway stations. The last remaining station was on the Midland Railway (later part of the LMS) route from Nottingham to Worksop via Mansfield, and was originally known as Shirebrook West, despite being on the eastern edge of the town. The route lost its passenger services in October 1964, leaving Shirebrook without a station, but the line remained open as a goods route. On the site of the goods yard a diesel locomotive fuelling depot was opened in the mid-1960s. The station was re-opened in 1998 as Shirebrook railway station for the new Robin Hood Line services from Nottingham to Worksop via Mansfield. A wagon repair and manufacturing business have a rail link with the main line.
Shirebrook South station was on the Great Northern Railway's "Leen Valley Extension" line mentioned above, opened in November 1901 and closed in September 1931.
General Sir John Coape Sherbrooke (1764–1830), General and administrator, Governor General of British North America, surname derived from Shirebrook by his father upon marriage
