Ollerton Watermill has been turning on the River Maun since at least the eleventh century, and the current metal wheel — fourteen feet two inches across — was fitted in 1862. It still works. The Mettam family keep it in order and open the tearoom on summer Sundays, next door to the Hop Pole, an eighteenth-century coaching inn that isn't currently serving anyone.
That's Old Ollerton: church, river, mill, red-brick Georgian houses at a crossroads that used to matter. New Ollerton is a different creature — built by the Butterley Company in the 1920s and 30s for colliery workers, its commercial centre relocated away from the original village. It's where most of what's actually open tends to be.
The Alders, on Worksop Road, does a daily carvery in a big Marston's carvery-pub with play areas inside and out. Reviewers rate the meats and sides, and one mentions staff bringing a bowl of water for the dog, unasked. Carvery chef Craig gets a mention too.
The Ollerton House, on Wellow Road, is smaller and family-run — landlord Des and landlady Alison have kept it going for more than fifteen years. Reviewers single out the Sunday carvery for generous portions and reasonable prices, with vegetarian, gluten-free and coeliac options.
The New Plough Inn, over in New Ollerton, has a dartboard, a pool table, and regular kids' discos. "Been a local pub of mine for 40 years," one reviewer wrote, "still is a great pub great atmosphere good pleasant staff."
Back in Old Ollerton, both historic coaching inns — the Hop Pole and the White Hart — are closed, Samuel Smith's houses waiting on whatever comes next. Some of that trade has gone to Bella Vita, an Italian restaurant in the former Snooty Fox, doing calamari and ravioli by the river.
St Giles' Church, rebuilt in the 1780s largely at the Savile family's expense, is Gothic rather than the classical Georgian more usual for its date — Pevsner notes it as unusual for that. The tower clock, fitted in 1875, still chimes on Cambridge quarters.
The Robin Hood Way heads north into Sherwood Forest towards the Major Oak, reckoned to be over a thousand years old. A 5.2-mile route runs to Edwinstowe and the Visitor Centre; a shorter one heads to Wellow, with its maypole, and on to Rufford Abbey Country Park, two miles south, where Cistercian ruins sit among a hundred and fifty acres of gardens and woodland.
Ollerton's Domesday entry records three watermills on the Maun and a combined value that fell from three pounds ten shillings to two pounds ten shillings between 1066 and 1086. Ollerton Colliery opened in 1926, during the General Strike, and closed in 1994 with the loss of around a thousand jobs; the site is now Sherwood Energy Village, whose tenants have included Center Parcs.
There's no railway station any more — Ollerton lost its passenger service in 1955 — but the Sherwood Arrow bus calls every two hours, and the village sits where the A614, A6075 and A616 meet, which is presumably why it mattered before any of those roads existed.
On a summer Sunday the mill wheel turns, the tearoom's open, and somewhere along the river Bella Vita's garden bar is doing steady trade in the sun. That's about the size of it.
