Attenborough

Pubs, cafés and the Nature Centre

The Bird Hide, a micropub on Attenborough Lane, began trading in 2021 and has six gravity-dispensed cask ales, two keg lines, four ciders and mead from Sherwood Forest. Its covered outdoor seating accommodates up to 48 people.

The Blue Bell on Nottingham Road is a refurbished pub-restaurant with steaks and burgers, a rear garden and a front patio. Its history reaches back to 1832, and the bar carries two regular ales alongside four changing guest beers; dogs are welcome in the bar.

Long Lane's Park Bistro serves home-cooked food, breakfasts, cakes, beers and wines beside a play park and grassed field, with dogs welcome in its covered outdoor seating. South of the village, the Nature Centre café offers lake views, balcony seating over the water, hot and cold food and daily homemade specials.

Wetland and medieval stone

Attenborough Nature Reserve covers 220 hectares of flooded former gravel-pit lakes, wetland, grassland and scrub where the Erewash meets the Trent. Large-scale gravel extraction began in 1929, and sand and gravel extraction was completed in 2017; the reserve opened in 1966, and Sir David Attenborough returned in 2005 for the visitor centre's launch. More than 250 bird species have been recorded there, and around 500,000 people visit each year, including families who return across three generations. Paths include the Trent Valley Way and a circular walk along the railway, riverbank and village, with views south to Thrumpton and Barton in Fabis.

St Mary's, Grade I listed, was built over roughly three centuries. Its millstone grit probably travelled by river from Derbyshire. The tower dates from the 14th century and its octagonal spire from the 15th; the spire was rebuilt in 1848 to 130 feet. Inside, the nave arcade capitals differ by side: gentle classical carving to the north, grotesque heads and monsters to the south. Thoroton described Attenborough as "rather to be called a Church than a Village, having but few houses, and no Fields."

Ireton and the Chilwell dead

Henry Ireton was born in Attenborough in 1611 and baptised at the church that November. He married Oliver Cromwell's daughter Bridget, signed Charles I's death warrant and died near Limerick in 1651.

On 1 July 1918, an explosion at the Chilwell shell-filling factory killed 134 workers. Historic England records that victims were buried in a series of mass graves at St Mary’s parish church; the National Churches Trust says a new memorial was dedicated in the church grounds in 2018.

Village life and a lasting clock

Attenborough’s Village Green on The Strand is used by its cricket and football clubs, and the Lucy and Vincent Brown Village Hall is in the village. Attenborough lies on the Nottingham–Derby rail route, and the 510 bus stops on Long Lane.

A millennium clock on the east wall of St Mary's tower was funded by a £3,000 bequest from parishioner Percy Barsby. It still keeps time for the village beside the churchyard where its neighbours were buried, a small gift with a long afterlife.