Parish History

Find out the history of Styrrup with Oldcotes Parish.

 

Our Story

The Parish of Styrrup with Oldcotes was formed in 1894 by Act of Parliament sitting within the Rural District Council of Worksop, and was predated by Overseers of the Poor Law. A list of Parish Chairmen who have served the Parish can be found by clicking here.

The Parish is located in Nottinghamshire and incorporates the villages of Oldcotes, Styrrup and part of the Hamlet of Serlby. The following historical information has been sourced from Wikipedia.

Serlby

The principle features of Serlby are the magnificent Serlby Hall and the Serlby Park Golf Course.

History of Serlby Hall

Serlby Hall is a Grade I listed 18th-century mansion and estate in Nottinghamshire, 7 miles north-east of Worksop. It is constructed of red brick and ashlar with a hipped slate roof. It is built in two storeys with a nine bay frontage, which has a colonnaded portico.

The first house on the site was built in 1740 by James Paine for John Monckton, 1st Viscount Galway, who had bought the 500 acre Serlby estate from the Saunderson family of Blyth. The 2nd Viscount, William Monckton-Arundell, inherited the estate in 1751 and replaced this house piecemeal, a process finished by the 3rd Viscount in 1773. The house was subsequently remodelled for the 5th Viscount in 1812 by William Lindley and John Woodhead, who demolished the wings and extended the central block by two bays on either side.

The house was an auxiliary military hospital during the First World War and a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. Following the death of the 9th Viscount Galway in 1971, it was inherited by his only child Charlotte, who decided to sell the Hall. The remaining contents were sold at auction in 1978 and the Hall itself sold to a private owner in 1981.

 

A hand-coloured engraving of Serlby Hall from “Neale’s Views of Seats,” 1830

Oldcotes

Oldcotes is a village in Nottinghamshire, England. It is in the civil parish of Styrrup with Oldcotes (where the population is shown). The village is centred on the crossroads of the A60 and A634 roads, five miles south-east of Maltby.

The history of the village is long and varied. The earliest proof of occupation was the Roman Villa located under the church.

The main focus of the village centres on the Village Hall on Maltby Road, with a history society, bingo, bowls and dancing clubs. There is one public house in the village called the King William.

Oldcotes is home to Professional Cyclist Kieran Simcox who rides for Neon-Velo Professional Cycling Team.

Historical Buildings in Oldcotes

Oldcotes Dyke

Oldcotes Dyke is the name of the final section of a river system that drains parts of north Nottinghamshire and the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. Historically, it has supported milling, with seven water mills drawing their power from its water.

It runs along the southern edge of the village, and has supplied the power to drive two water mills in Oldcotes, both of which produced flour. Goldthorpe Mill is situated to the west of the A60 Worksop to Tickhill road. It is an early 18th-century building, with later additions, and has been converted into a house. It still contains a steel water wheel dating from the late 19th century, and parts of the wooden machinery.

Oldcotes Mill is to the east of the village. This dates from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The wheel drove 3 sets of stones, and much of the machinery is still in situ. It is inscribed “John Thornton Millwright Engineer & C Worksop”.

 

St Mark’s Church.

 

St Helen’s Church.

St Mark’s Church

The parish church is dedicated to St Mark and is situated to the south-west of the crossroads. It was built in 1900 to a design by C Hodgson Fowler. It has a red brick plinth, but the main structure is timber-framed, with plaster infill. There is a bell-cote at the west end, and the structure is Grade II listed.

The nearby war memorial was designed by A H Borrowdale of Worksop, and was unveiled on 18 July 1920 by Colonel H Mellish, of Hodsock Priory. Revd F d’Arblay Burney from Harworth conducted a dedication ceremony on the occasion.

St Helen’s Church

At the western end of Main Street is the Roman Catholic Church of St Helen. It was built between 1869 and 1871 and is thought to have been designed by S J Nicholl. It is constructed of ashlar masonry, is set on a plinth, and has a decorative bell turret.

To the north of it, on Blyth Road, is a Wesleyan Chapel dating from 1840. It is built on a plinth, and the walls are rendered. It contained the original furniture when it was added to the listed building register in 1985, but has since been converted into a house.

The OS map for the village indicates the site of a former Roman villa near St Helen’s Church, off Main Street, which may have links to Hermeston Hall.

Hermeston Hall

Hermeston Hall is a manor house located just to the south of the village of Oldcotes on the road to Langold.

The Squire of the Village of Oldcotes was known as Squire Riddell who resided in Hermeston Hall which is technically just outside the southern boundary of the parish in the adjacent ancient parish of Hodsock with Langold.

Hermeston Hall is situated on a site where a previous manor stood, built around 1100 AD for the Cress family who lived there until 1408. Bess of Hardwick was known to have been connected to the property in the 16th century. Foundations of the earlier house have been found under the floor. However, the site is believed to date back much further, given a Roman road runs through the land and a Roman villa was once situated in the vicinity of the house.

After the English Civil War, the property fell into decline and from 1765 the area fell under the ownership of the Mellish family, who owned some 20,000 acres (81 km sq.) of local land.

The hall as it stands today was created in 1848 by Edward Challoner, a timber importer from Old Swan, Liverpool, who bought the house and some adjacent farmland and added a new south wing. It actually contains part of an older 16th-century abbey on the rear side which was owned by the Riddell family.

Edward Challoner left three daughters, one of whom, Catherine Flora, inherited the house and married Edward Charles Riddell. They added another two wings to create the square shape the house has today, with some 50 rooms.

At one stage it was being marketed as a hotel but is now residential.

Reputed Hauntings of Hermeston Hall

Hermeston Hall is primarily known for its paranormal activity and reported ghost sightings. Ghostly Roman soldiers have apparently been spotted marching along the driveway, a woman with red hair and black Elizabethan clothes resembling Bess of Hardwick, and a man and a boy have been all been sighted within the grounds. Phantom servants and children from the Victorian era are said to walk the corridors and the stairs and frequent the dining room.

Unexplained phenomenon have been regularly experienced in the dining room and billiard room including hearing low voices, the smell of tobacco and a sense of being watched. The ghost of a little boy playing the piano has also been heard, a child’s handprint on the window in the Chinese room and screaming children have been heard despite no children being near the property.

The people who currently own the property have indicated that the Bishop’s Room is haunted by a lady in white and an evil bishop, believed to be Edward Challoner, and have claimed that a malevolent spirit haunts the attic.

The mansion has been investigated by paranormal investigators who have caught unexplained orbs and red mists on camera and experienced unusually high EMF readings at Hermeston Hall. The TV programme Most Haunted also visited the hall and it featured in one episode during Series 6. For the programme, the location was renamed ‘The Ghost House’.

 

Hermeston Hall

 

A ghost resembling Bess of Hardwick is said to roam the grounds.

Styrrup

Lying to the north of the Parish, Styrrup existed primarily as a farming hamlet prior to redevelopment and had a close affinity to the townstead of Tickhill and was said to be the hunting grounds of Sir Roger De Busli, hence the origins of the name. Following the expansion of the coal industry, the focus of the village turned to the Town of Harworth and Bircotes, to which it shares a common boundary. The A1 trunk road is bridged to form the road to Serlby.

Tickhill Castle

Tickhill Castle was built by Roger de Busli, one of the most powerful of the first wave of Norman magnates who had come to England with William the Conqueror. The castle had an eventful history in national life.

It was held for the usurping prince John against his brother King Richard I, when the latter returned from abroad in 1194 after his absence on crusade.

In 1322, it was the site of a three-week siege during baronial conflicts.

In the civil war of the 1640’s, its importance as a local centre of resistance led to its ‘slighting’ (intentional disabling) by Parliament after the defeat of the royalist forces there in 1648. (Conisbrough, long-disused as a fortress by this time, escaped such a fate.)

Today, Tickhill Castle remains an impressive ruin. It retains its Norman gatehouse, built in 1129-1130; the foundations of the 11-sided keep (one of only two in the world) on a mound 75 feet (23 m) high, built in 1178-79 on the model of the keep at Conisbrough; substantial defensive ditches, some parts of which remain as a moat; and walls enclosing an inner courtyard covering 2 acres (8,100 sq. m).

Our Parish is a small, but lovely part of Nottinghamshire.