Blidworth

Tower clocks and village life

St Mary of the Purification has two clock faces on its tower, one facing east and one west, so there's no excuse for being late to anything on Main Street. The tower is the oldest part of the building, a 15th-century survivor; the rest was rebuilt in 1739 and again in 1839.

The Black Bull on Main Street is family-owned, with four B&B rooms and two rooms downstairs — one still a bar, the other a former lounge turned restaurant. The pub has up to five rotating guest beers, usually including Pheasantry and Stancill, with three typically from Nottinghamshire breweries. The kitchen serves good English and more adventurous meals, including vegetarian options.

Two more village locals

The Bird in Hand is the community local — dartboard, board games, quiz nights, live sport on the screens, and an "Order & Pay" app for anyone who can't be bothered walking to the bar. The beer garden has heaters and a covered area for wetter days.

Down in Blidworth Bottoms, the Fox & Hounds serves a home-made steak and Stilton pie with seasonal vegetables and gravy, alongside Sunday roasts of beef and chicken with big Yorkshire puddings.

Provisions and paths through the woods

For provisions, BJ Bakery is on Mansfield Road near the fire station. Mansfield, the nearest town, is five miles off — the 141 bus gets you there in twenty minutes, and the village sits just off the B6020.

Blidworth stands in what used to be Sherwood Forest, and the Robin Hood Way runs through the middle of it, passing through Blidworth Woods twice — pine woodland and heathland, with waymarked trails from Longdale Lane. A linking path turns the two passes into a circular walk of about ten miles, and a shorter stage, roughly six miles, heads on to Papplewick via Newstead Abbey.

From Blideworde to the colliery

The Domesday Book records Blidworth — Blideworde — as five households with three ploughlands and a mill, held by the Archbishop of York. Blidworth’s rural character changed when Blidworth Colliery was sunk in 1925–26 and a large miners’ village was built; the colliery closed in 1989.

Robin Hood's Will Scarlet is traditionally buried in the churchyard, marked by a weathered stone fragment popularly called his monument, though historians note outlaws rarely got churchyard burials. Out in a field nearby stands the Druid Stone, a holed glacial boulder over 13 feet high with nothing to do with druids — that's a Victorian guess. Sick children were once passed through the hole in it for a cure.

Outlaws, the Druid Stone and Candlemas

Every Candlemas, St Mary's holds a ceremony that survives nowhere else in England: a baby boy born nearest to Christmas, to married, Christian parents in the village, is rocked in a flower-decorated cradle about 200 years old. It was banned around 1600, revived in 1842, lapsed again, and came back for good in 1922. Every rocked baby's name goes on a plaque at the back of the church — a small, growing list of who has passed through.