Edwinstowe Historical Society has been awarded a grant of £10,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable us to establish a Community Archive Centre in Edwinstowe House.

The grant of £10,000 will help us make full use of the room, kindly given to us by David Woodhead, the Chief Executive of Nuture Enterprises Ltd (now Woodhead Enterprise Ltd)

In a planned project over the next 18 months, the group intends to train members in the use of digital technology to enable us to catalogue, archive and make more readily available the wealth of material that we hold, to a wider audience.

Edwinstowe Historical Society members with David Woodhead. Back: Liz Stewart-Smith, David Woodhead, Janice Lane. Front: Di Roker, Margaret Woodhead, Shirley Moore.

The creation of a Community Heritage website will enable schools, groups and individuals to access our extensive collection of resources ensuring the local past of our village is not lost.

Our Chairman in 2015, Di Roker, commented,”  I am absolutely delighted that we have managed to secure this lottery grant and am extremely grateful to  Shirley Moore and her team who have worked so hard on the project. We have been aware for some years that our methods of storage and conservation were becoming increasingly outdated, but lack of funds prevented us from addressing the issue. When David Woodhead kindly offered us a room in Edwinstowe House, it felt like the beginning of a new era, and now the Lottery grant will enable us to update all aspects of the work we do, and to give the public greater access to our archives through a newly designed website. Here’s to the future!

New Book Charts the history of Edwinstowe

On September 16^th 2015, members of the Historical Society congratulated Mrs Margaret Woodhead on the launch of the latest volume of history of the village.

Margaret Woodhead with members of the Edwinstowe Historical Society

This generously illustrated volume covers a decade of rapid change which saw the coming of the railway and the opening of the Dukeries Hotel built by Mansfield Brewery to cater for the large number of day trippers visiting the Major oak, or touring the Dukeries Estates in heavily-laden carriages.

At the same time, Earl Manvers opened a pioneering co-operative store for the village.

Octogenarian local historian Margaret Woodhead presents a fascinating miscellany, drawing on newspaper reports, letters and documen
ts from local archives and photographs from the Societies Collection.

Welcome to our new website, which is currently under construction.