Royal forest, mining story
Clipstone
A Nottinghamshire settlement where medieval royal history, colliery heritage and two broad outdoor landscapes meet.
- Best for
- Royal history, mining heritage and forest trails
- Give it
- A half day, or longer with Sherwood Pines
- Don't miss
- King John's Palace and Vicar Water Country Park
The Fox verdict
Royal ruins and a colliery skyline at Sherwood's edge
Clipstone pairs the remains of a medieval royal hunting lodge with country-park paths, forest cycling and the surviving headstocks of its former colliery.
The contrast is the point: King John's Palace recalls eight visiting kings, while the headstocks and Vicar Water Country Park show how the mining landscape shaped the modern settlement. Sherwood Pines adds walking and cycling, and All Saints Church preserves an older Saxon fragment.
Your picks, your pace
Make Clipstone yours
Choose a mood or build your own list. Your saved stops are an ordering aid, with a direct map route when you are ready.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Dog & Duck
A large open-plan gastropub with an all-day menu, vegan and gluten-free options, a beer garden and real ales including Doom Bar plus a changing guest ale.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Main Road, Kings Clipstone
- Access
- Dogs are not allowed in the main restaurant but are permitted in the outdoor beer garden, weather permitting.
Vicar Water Country Park
An 80-hectare former colliery landscape of heathland, woodland and grassland around Vicar Pond, with play equipment, coarse fishing, picnic areas and the mining-heritage sculpture nicknamed the Golden Hand.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Clipstone
- Access
- The research records free parking, a visitor centre with café, toilets and information, and an accessible swing seat in the play area.
King John's Palace
The remains of a royal hunting lodge first documented in 1164–5, visited by eight kings; Edward I held a parliament here in 1290 while travelling to Scotland.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Kings Clipstone
Walks & outdoors
1 placeSherwood Pines Forest Park
A forest park of more than 2,200 acres for walking and mountain biking, including the family-friendly blue-graded Robin Hood Adventure Cycle Trail and the more technical red-graded Outlaw Red route.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 2 hours 30 minutes
- Locality
- adjoining Kings Clipstone
- Access
- The research records wheelchair-accessible trails and paths, bike hire, a café, play area, picnic area and toilets.
History & heritage
1 placeAll Saints Church, Clipstone
A Grade II church whose medieval west tower survives later rebuilding; inside, a fragment of a Saxon preaching cross is displayed in a glass case in the south transept.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Clipstone
No places match this filter. Choose All places to reset the list.
On the map
Clipstone at a glance
Tap a marker to jump to its guide card.
Three ways to explore Clipstone
Signature outings
Find the Golden Hand
Explore heathland, woodland and grassland around Vicar Pond, then look for the park's mining-heritage sculpture nicknamed the Golden Hand.
Ride Sherwood Pines
Take the blue-graded Robin Hood Adventure Cycle Trail or the more technical red-graded Outlaw Red route through Sherwood Pines.
See the Saxon fragment
All Saints preserves part of a Saxon preaching cross in a glass case in the south transept, beyond its surviving medieval west tower.
The town story
Clipstone Town Guide
From a village pub and royal ruins to forest trails and colliery landmarks, Clipstone's accepted story moves between two very different eras.
A Pub Beside the Palace
The Dog & Duck is, according to Wikipedia, the only social meeting place in Kings Clipstone. It's a large, open-plan gastropub on Main Road, with an all-day menu that runs to fish and chips at £17.95, vegan dishes marked VV (a pizza without cheese, a sweet potato and spinach pie) and gluten-free options. Doom Bar's on the pumps along with a changing guest ale. Reviews split: some found the Sunday lunch "excellent food, top notch waiting service, and a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere," others thought it "average at best, with big portions but lacking any seasoning or personality." Dogs aren't allowed in the main restaurant but are welcome in the beer garden, which looks out over meadowland that was once part of the Great Pond belonging to King John's Palace, a few hundred yards up the road.
That's the palace's only real trace at ground level in the village pub. The ruins themselves sit at Kings Clipstone, near Kings Clipstone Brewery, a micro-brewery on Mansfield Road turning out everything from dark Irish stout to pale ale since 2012.
Parks, Forest and Trails
Clipstone has a primary school, a library, a village hall and a football club, Clipstone Welfare F.C. For a bigger day out there's Vicar Water Country Park, 80 hectares of former colliery spoil tips turned into heathland, woodland and grassland around a 2.5-hectare lake. It has a children's play area with a giant zip wire, coarse fishing for carp, bream, roach and perch, a café and monthly ranger-led walks, plus a mining-heritage sculpture nicknamed the Golden Hand.
Sherwood Pines Forest Park adjoins the parish to the south — over 2,200 acres of walking and cycling, including the family-friendly Robin Hood Adventure Cycle Trail and the tougher, red-graded Outlaw Red. The Robin Hood Way and National Cycle Route 6 both pass through, and the Greenwood Walk heads west from the village to the main forest paths, about a fifteen-minute walk from the Major Oak.
Two Churches and a Mining Skyline
All Saints Church keeps a fragment of a Saxon preaching cross in a glass case in the south transept. Only its west tower is medieval; the rest was rebuilt in 1739 and again in 1839. A second All Saints, over in New Clipstone, was built in 1928 for the colliery village, funded partly by the Bolsover Colliery Company and partly by the Duke of Portland.
The colliery itself closed in 2003, but its headstocks are still there — Grade II listed, 63 metres tall, built in 1953, and believed to be the tallest surviving headstocks in Europe.
Kings, Parliament and the Road In
Up at Kings Clipstone, a royal hunting lodge stood from at least 1164, visited over the centuries by eight kings despite being named for the one, John, who spent just nine days there. Edward I held a parliament on the site in 1290, on his way to Scotland, and the crowd was so large that his clerks had to lodge in Warsop because the palace couldn't fit them. The Domesday Book valued the whole settlement at two pounds.
Mansfield station is about four miles off, with buses 16 and 16a running from Mansfield Bus Station to Ward Road. The road in is the B6030, known locally as the Rat Hole. None of which stops the beer garden at the Dog & Duck from being a perfectly good place to sit on a Sunday, looking at the grass where a king once kept his fish.
Stay around Nottinghamshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Nottinghamshire, linked directly to their property pages.
Clipstone
Sherwood Pines - Big Garden!
- Sleeps 9
- 3 bedrooms
Woodborough
Stable Cottage - with free parking!
- Sleeps 6
- 1 bedroom
Nottingham
Ruth's House With Parking
- Sleeps 7
- 2 bedrooms
Nottingham
Susan's House
- Sleeps 12
- 3 bedrooms
Nottingham
Abbie's House
- Sleeps 8
- 2 bedrooms
A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- The Dog & Duck — dognduck.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Vicar Water Country Park — nottinghamshire.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Sherwood Pines Forest Park — forestryengland.uk national body or asset manager
- All Saints Church, Clipstone — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- King John's Palace — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access