Hucknall

Micropubs and old locals

Byron's Rest occupies a former sewing shop on Baker Street, opposite St Mary Magdalene church, and takes its name from the poet buried inside. It opened as a micropub in February 2018, added a snug in 2019, and has since added a secret garden at the rear — a tranquil oasis in the heart of Hucknall.

There's no shortage of drinking spots. The Beer Shack, a former shop converted in 2013, was Hucknall's first micropub — five rotating ales, up to a dozen ciders, "many rums & pork pies," and deliberately no television, radio, jukebox or WiFi, on the theory that fewer distractions means more conversation. It's been named Nottingham CAMRA's Real Cider Pub of the Year. The Red Lion on the High Street claims the older history, an eighteenth-century, wet-led hostelry where, in Byron's day, his tenants came to pay their rent. For food there's the Half Moon, a family-friendly town-centre pub in a building dating to 1868, known locally for the size of its Yorkshire puddings, and the Nabb Inn on the edge of town, a Greene King pub doing hand-battered fish and chips. The Pilgrim Oak, the town's Wetherspoon, took its name from a once-famous tree that stood outside Byron's Newstead Abbey.

Parks and room to move

Titchfield Park, south of the town centre, has a skate park, a bowling green, a wildflower meadow. The leisure centre on Linby Road has two pools, one with a movable floor, and won Regional Centre of the Year at the 2024 ukactive Awards. From the railway station you can follow a longer walk to Newstead Abbey, or take on the near-seven-mile circular through Freckland Wood and Papplewick.

Byron, Ada and the church

Inside St Mary Magdalene, the Byron family vault sits beneath the chancel. Byron was buried there in 1824; his daughter Ada, Countess of Lovelace, asked to be buried beside him, and was, in 1852 — the last of the family laid in the vault, and by then better known for her work with Charles Babbage than for her father's poetry. The church also holds one of the largest collections of Charles Eamer Kempe stained glass anywhere, twenty-five windows, and in the churchyard outside the north transept lies Ben Caunt, a bare-knuckle heavyweight champion known as the Torkard Giant, buried near two of his children who died in a pub fire in 1851.

Colliery and aerodrome

Hucknall was a colliery town for 125 years, and then an aerodrome town. Rolls-Royce tested engines here from 1935, and in August 1953 the Thrust Measuring Rig, nicknamed the Flying Bedstead for its resemblance to a four-poster bed, made the world's first vertical take-off and landing on the airfield — a direct ancestor of the Harrier jump jet.

Rail, tram and local voices

Hucknall's station is also a tram stop, the northern terminus of Nottingham's NET line, with trains running to Nottingham and north to Mansfield. "Hucknall's got so many cool locations and such a great atmosphere," says the author Kristina Adams, who lives here and finds spooky spots on dog walks. Ask a regular at the Beer Shack and they'll point you to one.