Memorial Ave, Worksop - 01909 501148 worksop.tourist@bassetlaw.gov.uk

Evidence that Worksop existed before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is provided by the Domesday Book of 1086:

"In Werchesope, (Worksop) Elsi (son of Caschin) had three carucates of land to be taxed. Land to eight ploughs. Roger has one plough in the demesne there, and twenty-two sokemen who hold twelve oxgangs of this land, and twenty-four villanes and eight bordars having twenty-two ploughs, and seven acres of meadow. Wood pasture two miles long, and three quarentens broad."

This early period of the town's history was humorously depicted in the children's television show, Maid Marian and her Merry Men, where it was largely portrayed as a mass of mud.

After the conquest, in about 1103, William de Lovetot established a castle and Augustinian priory at Worksop. Subsequently Worksop grew into 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.

In recent years Worksop has been recognised as having a serious drugs problem attributed to the decline of coal mining in the early 1990s during the government of John Major. Now a dedicated drug and alcohol team have strived to clean up the once overwhelming problem that blighted the town. Since 2005 the number of addicts has been in a steady decline. The member of parliament for Bassetlaw, John Mann, has fought a high-profile campaign to tackle the problem, once described as being at levels seen in inner cities.

In June 2007 Worksop, along with several nearby villages, was hit by one of its worst floods for a hundred years.

Worksop town centre was flooded when the River Ryton received 72mm of rain, almost two months of rain fall in 15 hours. The river, which flows through the town centre, peaked at 2.189m at 05:02 on 26 June 2007, compared to the previous highest recorded level of 0.73m in April 1983.

Flooding occurred at 273 properties in the town, as the worst natural disaster to hit the Sheffield area in over 400 years, said meteorologists, as the rivers Don, Sheaf, Rother, Hipper and Ryton all burst their banks.