Stanfree

From Wikishire
Jump to: navigation, search
Stanfree
Derbyshire
Stanfree - View from Oxcroft.jpg
Stanfree viewed from Oxcroft
Location
Grid reference: SK476739
Location: 53°15’38"N, 1°17’12"W
Data
Local Government
Council: Bolsover

Stanfree is a village in north-eastern Derbyshire; a small place consisting of a couple of rows of terraced cottages, lying halfway between Shuttlewood and Clowne.

The village is described in Bagshaw's directory of 1846 as:

"a hamlet about 2 and a quarter miles north from Bolsover market place".

Iron seems to have been smelted here in primitive ages, and coal was worked some 500 years ago. Remains of the workings of both can be found.

The four roads meeting here are said by tradition to have once been the main roads of England and Stanfree to have been a special meeting place, or that could be a local conceit.

The local colliery was a drift mine: it was closed in 1974. The only reminder of the mining history of the village are the Oxcroft Miners' Welfare, and this was destroyed by fire in the late 1980s. It was rebuilt on the site of the cricket pavilion.

The Appletree Inn on the corner of Appletree Road and Clowne Road closed in 2008.