The cottages along Main Street still carry the long windows framework knitters needed for light at their stocking frames — you can see them at the junction with Shelt Hill and at number 145, with a first-floor workshop surviving at the back of number 117. Stockings were Woodborough's living from 1589, when William Lee invented the frame, until the early 1900s; by 1844 the village had 191 of them.
Two pubs remain of what was once at least seven. The Four Bells, at 87 Main Street, started out as the Eight Bells in 1762, with stabling for eight horses, and picked up its current name in 1844 before being rebuilt in the 1920s; Charlie and Jake took over in 2024. The menu runs to Korean-influenced dishes and gourmet burgers alongside the Sunday roasts, with gluten-free and vegan options and a small beer garden where staff bring dogs a water bowl and a treat.
The Nag's Head, further along Main Street, was set up around 1870 by Noah Wood, with a large car park and beer garden, and a play area for the kids. Steaks, gammon, mixed grills and fish, and Greene King Old Speckled Hen on cask under a Cask Marque plaque. Food is served seven days a week, and dogs are welcome in the snug. Twenty per cent off food and hot drinks, Monday and Tuesday teatime.
By 1926 the Bugle Horn, the Cock & Falcon, the Punch Bowl, the New Inn, the Half Moon and the Royal Oak had all gone. The Bugle Horn's doorstone, carved "GAB 1680", survived its demolition in 1965 and was built into a boundary wall.
There's also Stoppards, the butcher at 3A Main Street, and the post office and newsagent at 137, which traces back to a Woodborough post office first recorded in 1864.
The walking starts at the village hall on Lingwood Lane, where the WI Trail's two circular routes cover 6.5km through country the trail describes as "the intricate interlocking of the spurs of hills" — the local word for these small steep valleys is dumbles, and one path follows them to Lambley, past two pubs on the way. Foxwood Lane climbs out of the village and drops steeply down Bonner Hill into Calverton, past Fox Wood, where the earthworks of an Iron Age hillfort sit on the high ground.
St Swithun's chancel was rebuilt in 1356 by Richard de Strelley, verderer of Sherwood Forest and MP for Nottinghamshire, using the same masons who built the Chapter House at Southwell Minster; the Strelley arms are still on the east gable. The font is Norman, cut from solid Mansfield stone. The medieval rood screen went at the Reformation — all that's left of it is a hole in the chancel-arch masonry.
Domesday Book records Woodborough, as "Udeburg," seven times over, under seven different owners. One holding was worth five shillings and fourpence in 1066, and exactly the same in 1086.
Lowdham, four miles off, is the nearest station, on the Newark–Lincoln line; the 61 bus runs from Nottingham through Mapperley and Lambley to Woodborough and on to Calverton.
Woodborough's Heritage, a volunteer website, keeps the parish's records — pub deeds, war losses, aircraft that came down on the fields — going, one page at a time, for anyone who asks.
