Awsworth

The Iron Giant

Fifteen slender iron piers carry the Bennerley Viaduct across the Erewash Valley at Awsworth, a quarter of a mile of wrought-iron lattice known locally as the Iron Giant. It is one of only two surviving wrought-iron railway viaducts in England, standing today largely by accident: too expensive to demolish after the trains stopped in the 1960s. The viaduct stood unused for decades before the Friends of Bennerley Viaduct reopened it to walkers and cyclists in January 2022 after £1.7m of restoration. A woodchip trail leads in from the village, and a circular walk taking in the viaduct, canal towpath and ironwork takes about two hours.

D.H. Lawrence, who grew up in the Erewash Valley, put it in Sons and Lovers: "She's over the viaduct. You'll just do it."

Awsworth's Village Pubs

The village has three pubs. The Gate Inn, a red-brick three-storey building where Main Street becomes Awsworth Lane, reopened as a free house in December 2010 and won Pub of Excellence and LocAle Pub of the Year awards. It keeps seven changing real ales, real cider on draught and gluten-free ales, with a rear courtyard, sun terrace and front patio. Its former skittle alley has been converted into a smoking area, and it hosts the Border Morris dancers.

The Crown Inn, on Croft Crescent, began as a dwellinghouse around 1860 and, until recent boundary changes, was the only pub inside Awsworth; it has been a social fixture for over 150 years. A rare surviving skittle alley occupies a separate building at the rear, alongside a pool table and dart board. The bar also hosted Coroner's Inquests into deaths at nearby Cossall Colliery between 1883 and 1888: William Robinson, 55, killed by a fall of roof; George Henry Statham, 17, run over by tubs; and William Green, 15, and William Horton, 14, killed together by a fall in a roadway.

Food and Railway Connections

The Hogs Head Hotel on Awsworth Lane has twelve en-suite rooms and serves traditional English food with occasional Continental specialities. The site was a farm, then a piggery, then a family home after the Hogg family bought it in 1974; the family's haulage business ran from there until the property became a hotel in 1986. A central stone section survives from an earlier coaching operation.

Awsworth lost its own railway station in 1964. The nearest one now is Ilkeston, about a mile from the viaduct, reopened in 2017, and the Trent Barton 27 bus runs through the village between Kimberley and Ilkeston.

Village Provisions and Origins

For groceries there's a Nisa Local on The Lane. The old Co-operative building on Main Street was put up in 1903. No butcher, baker or deli operates in the village.

St Peter's, the parish church, wasn't built until 1746 — before that, Awsworth's churchgoers walked to Nuthall. The Domesday Book lists Awsworth twice, under two different lords, and both entries are marked simply "waste."

Village Recreation

The Shiloh recreation ground has a wheelchair-accessible trampoline and a five-section trim trail, funded by £20,000 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.