Worksop
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Template:GBdot Worksop is a town in Nottinghamshire, England, situated on the River Ryton although its nearest city is Sheffield in South Yorkshire. The town is located at 53º 19’N, 1º 7’W, at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. Population (2004): 39,800.
History
Worksop was founded in Anglo-Saxon times, and existed for a long time as a market town. The building of the Chesterfield Canal in 1777, and the subsequent construction of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1849, both of which passed through the settlement, led to a degree of growth. Discovery of sizable coal seams further increased interest in the area.
Miscellaneous
Worksop is known as the "Gateway to the Dukeries", so called for the number of ducal residences in the area. Clumber Park is a large such park, now open to the public.
The town was the setting for the children's television show, Maid Marian and her Merry Men, where it was depicted largely as a mass of mud.
Worksop is where Oxo is manufactured by Campbell Soup UK, which it bought from Unilever.
In recent years Worksop has been recognised as having a serious drugs problem often attributed to the closure of Manton colliery in 1994 as part of the wholesale closure of mines in the early 1990's by the government of John Major. The new member of parliament for Bassetlaw, John Mann, has fought a high-profile campaign to tackle the problem, described as being comparable to the levels seen in inner cities. A television documentary shown on ITV1 in 2004 highlighted the issue, and the local Worksop Guardian newspaper [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1258956,00.html) has played a role in the issue, though the problem remains.
Worksop was the birth place of:
- Donald Pleasance, actor
- Lee Westwood, golfer
- Bruce Dickinson, singer in the heavy metal band Iron Maiden
- Graham Taylor, football manager
External link
- Worksop Guardian (http://www.worksoptoday.co.uk)
- The Worksop FactFile (http://www.nottsnet.co.uk/Worksop/worksop_facts.htm)
- Oxo (http://www.oxo.co.uk)