Ollerton

Ollerton is a small town in Nottinghamshire, England, on the edge of Sherwood Forest in the area known as the Dukeries. It forms part of the civil parish of Ollerton and Boughton and is in Newark and Sherwood District . The population of this civil parish at the 2011 census was 9,840.

Map of Ollerton, Newark, UK

Formerly a rural village with a tradition of hop-growing, from the 1920s onwards the main industry was coal mining with Ollerton expanding greatly during the 1960s and 1970s. The colliery was sunk in the 1920s and completed during the General Strike of 1926, which led to a saying of "Ollerton was ever built with scab labour". During the expansion of the pit, many miners from closed collieries in north-eastern England and Scotland moved to work at Ollerton. There was a large Polish community amongst the miners at Ollerton, estimated to make up roughly half the workforce at the time of the 1984-1985 strike.

As Ollerton Colliery was considered one of the most left-wing pits in Nottinghamshire, it was subject to heavy picketing at the time of the ballot by the Nottinghamshire NUM in March 1984. A miner from Ackton Hall Colliery, near Featherstone, West Yorkshire died at Ollerton when picketing during the miners' strike on 15 April 1984. David Gareth Jones was hit in the neck by a brick thrown by a local youth when he was picketing, but the post-mortem ruled that it had not caused his death and that it was more likely to have been caused by being pressed against the pit gates earlier in the day. News of his death led to hundreds of pickets staying in Ollerton town centre overnight. At the request of Nottinghamshire Police, Arthur Scargill appeared and called for calm in the wake of the tragedy. However, several working miners in Ollerton reported that their gardens and cars had been vandalised during the night. A memorial bench was sited near the spot where David died. As a mark of respect for David Jones, Ollerton Colliery closed for a few days afterwards.

Ollerton features in a connected song by Australian singer Darren Hayes called "A Hundred Challenging Things A Boy Can Do" on his 2007 album, This Delicate Thing We've Made.

The mine closed in 1994. Subsequently, the land around the mine was reclaimed and redeveloped as an ecologically sustainable "village" of commercial offices, including a large nearby Tesco superstore.

In the old part of the original village, Ollerton Watermill was built in 1713 on the River Maun. It operated commercially producing flour until 1984. Restored in 1993, it now houses a teashop and exhibition. Ollerton Town has a local football team, Ollerton Town F.C.

Transport: Ollerton is served by Stagecoach Mansfield, Travel Wright. Stagecaoch Bassetlaw run the Sherwood Arrow between Worksop/Retford-Ollerton-Nottingham every 60 minutes.

Ollerton is the birthplace of Tim Flear MVO (Royal Victorian Order), career member of the British diplomatic service and a HM Consul-General in the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Flear's father was the local butcher.

There is some ambition to reinstate passenger train services to the town by using the current freight only line from Shirebrook on the Nottingham-Worksop route.