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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Pleasley is a village and civil parish between Chesterfield and Mansfield, 5 miles (8 km) southeast of Bolsover, Derbyshire, England and 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Mansfield. The River Meden, which forms the county boundary in this area, runs through the village.
The bulk of the village is in the Bolsover District, and constitutes a civil parish of the same name. The population of this civil parish at the 2011 UK census was 2,305. A portion of the parish is in the Mansfield District of Nottinghamshire and is unparished. Pleasley is not mentioned in the Domesday Book as it was part of Glapwell parish in 1086.
George Sitwell of Eckington, ironmaster, mined iron locally and at Pleasley built a furnace, a forge and power saws in the seventeenth century.
Pleasley was a coal mining village for over 100 years. The Stanton Ironworks Company leased the mineral rights in 1872, and work on building the shaft for Pleasley Colliery began soon afterwards. Stanton's continued to operate it until nationalisation in 1946, after which it was run by the National Coal Board until it closed in 1983, with some of the workforce transferring to nearby Shirebrook colliery from where the accessible remaining underground coal reserves were mined.
Pleasley, as a whole, spreads into two counties, with the old coal mine high above the old village centre and a series of very large old weaving mills below in the valley being the historic main industries, together with farming.
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Research Tips
- Derbyshire Record Office website
- British History Online (Victoria County Histories) does not appear to cover Derbyshire geographically. A History of the County of Derby: Volume 2, edited by William Page is a part-volume covering the religious houses of the county. No further volumes have been found.
- GENUKI main page for Derbyshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
- The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
- A Vision of Britain through Time, Derbyshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
- For a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from the following selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile. Sections of the 1900 map showing parish boundaries only have been reproduced on some (but not all) parish pages here in WeRelate.
- Map of Derbyshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown.
- Map of Derbyshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were some changes in urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.
- Ordnance Survey map of Derbyshire for 1967 This is the last in this series and was made while Derbyshire was experimenting with the non-metropolitan district structure adopted in 1974. It is a much cleaner map for reading the names of the civil parishes, but the smaller villages are no longer visible.
- These are only three of the series of maps to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time.
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