Mansfield


Mansfield is a large market town in Nottinghamshire, England, the main town in the District of Mansfield and Mansfield Urban Area. It lies in the Maun Valley surrounded by hills, north of Nottingham in a largely urban district, most of whose 106,556 population live in the town, with Market Warsop a secondary centre. It lies next to the urban area of Sutton-in-Ashfield. Mansfield is the only major sub-regional centre in the county, covering an area of 30 square miles and is the only local authority in Nottinghamshire directly to elect its mayor. The district has been influenced by a past of coal mining and textiles that lasted into the 1990s; since then Mansfield has 20.2 per cent of its working-age population claiming out-of-work benefits.. The population has fallen over the last century, despite some industrial diversification.

History

Settlement in the Mansfield area is known to date back to Roman times. A villa was discovered in 1787 by Major Hayman Rooke between Mansfield Woodhouse and Pleasley; a cache of denarii coins was found near King's Mill in 1849. Early English royalty are said to have stayed there, with Mercian Kings using it as a base for hunting in nearby Sherwood Forest.
The Domesday Book records the settlement as Mammesfeld. Market-petition documents of 1227 spelt it Maunnesfeld. By the time King Richard II signed a warrant in November 1377 granting the right for tenants to hold a four-day fair every year, the spelling had changed again to Mannesfeld. There are remains of the 12th-century King John's Palace, in Clipstone, between Mansfield and Edwinstowe, in an area of retreat for royal families and dignitaries in the 14th and 15th centuries. Access to the town was by a small horse-drawn carriageway from the city of Nottingham, en route to Sheffield. On West Gate in the town centre, a commemorative plaque marks the point thought in 2013 to have been the centre of Sherwood Forest. A tree was planted nearby.
Access in the 16th and 17th centuries was through several inns and stable yards. The Harte, the Swan, the Talbot, the White Bear, the Ram and the White Lion were known to date from medieval times. Several timber-framed cruck buildings were demolished in 1929 and another in 1973, which was documented by a local historical society during its demolition and dated to about 1400 or earlier. Other Tudor houses in Stockwell Gate, Bridge St and Lime Tree Place were also demolished to make way for development before they could be viewed for listing. Most of the remaining buildings are from the 17th century.

Geography and climate

Like most of the UK, Mansfield has a temperate oceanic climate, with a narrow temperature range, an even spread of rainfall, low levels of sunshine and often breezy conditions throughout the year. The closest weather-station records for Mansfield come from Warsop in Meden Vale, about seven miles to the north.
The absolute maximum temperature record for the area stands at, recorded in August 1990. In a typical year the warmest day should reach and 12.72 days should reach or higher.
The absolute minimum temperature record for the area is, recorded in January 1987. There is air frost on an average of 59 nights a year.
Rainfall averages 634 mm a year, with 113 days reporting in excess of 1 mm of rain.

Economy

Town centre

Mansfield has a large market square surrounded by a commercial and retail centre. It includes a museum, the Palace Theatre, restaurants, fast-food outlets, pubs, bars and night clubs. On 6 April 2010 a town-centre Business Improvement District was founded with offices in the old Town Hall in the Market Place, financed by 2 per cent extra on the rateable value of nearby businesses.
The BID operates on a five-year business basis, with a rolling yearly operational plan. Before its tenure ended in 2015, over 560 shops and other town-centre businesses were canvassed in late 2014 to vote on the first continuation period. Mansfield District Council contracted out of this procedure at a projected cost to council taxpayers of £8,000. On a 55 per cent turnout, 77 per cent voted to continue the BID for another five years.
The BID's additional services and delivery of projects enhance the town centre as a shopping centre. It offers events to attract visitors and raise awareness and security for the town centre, including management of persistent banning orders and improvement of shop frontages.
Records show the first yearly income to have been £294,697, with an operating surplus of £151,610. One achievement in 2012–2013 was a crowd-funded town centre Wi-Fi internet installation costing £37,000, and completed by June 2013, using a network of AP nodes requiring registration for free use, and dedicated optional BID local information "App" for Android and iPhone available for download. The intentions were to encourage shoppers and visitors to linger in the town centre for longer, to offer internet access to small businesses, and to provide market traders with a means of accepting non-cash payments.
Other BID moves have been "gating off" alleyways blighted by anti-social behaviour, improving signage, and enhancing cleansing operations.
Several shopkeepers complained in 2011 that the BID was "not doing enough to boost town trade." In 2012, Mansfield Constituency Labour Party criticised the BID for receiving almost a million pounds in its first three years, with little to show for it.

Retail shopping

Concerned at the decline in town-centre shops and the under-used market square, Mansfield's MP Sir Alan Meale in November 2013 issued a 50-point blueprint for reversing this. He again spoke out in February 2014, saying no aspects of his report had been acted on and the council's Queen's Place development had not been let since the completion ceremony in November 2013.
In August 2014, the Council announced its first tenants in the 2.4 million pound development, for two retail areas, six offices and a cafe/takeaway. On top of undisclosed rental, businesses were to pay business rates, VAT, a service charge on communal areas and a 2 per cent levy on rateable value to the Mansfield BID. The council proposed instead to allow the Mansfield BID, if voted to continue from 2015, to use nearby office accommodation "free of charge... estimated as an in-kind contribution equivalent to £4,000 per annum."
In September 2014, Meale again attacked the council for spending on a new-build when other council-owned properties were run down, and for ignoring his 50-point plan. He urged it to abandon its office complex in Chesterfield Road in favour of the underused Town Hall. It then emerged that only the cafe was a new business; the office tenants in Queen's Place were moving in from nearby premises. In late 2015, the second of two ground-floor units empty for two years since completion was taken by an ice-cream parlour.
Mansfield's many retail outlets include an indoor shopping centre called the Four Seasons, with over 50 units occupied by national chains and phone shops, and two department stores.
Other stores and a coffee chain had been in West Gate since 2011, along with existing similar cafés. The 2008 economic crisis led to several shops closing and raised the number of homeless seeking shelter in doorways. However, property vacancy is less than 11 per cent. There are still some independent town-centre shops and other small family businesses.
Rosemary Centre, a pedestrianised area off the town centre, has a covered parade, and further off, three outdoor retail parks, two with adjacent branded fast-food outlets. Extensive supermarket developments are being made by four of the five major food retailers, along with discounters and small convenience stores.

Markets

Mansfield is a market town with a 700-year-old market tradition: the Royal Charter was issued in 1227. The present market square was created through demolition after the Improvement Act of 1823. In the centre is the Bentinck Memorial, built in 1849 to commemorate Lord George Bentinck, son of the William Bentinck, 4th Duke of Portland, a local landowner.
A nearby area called Buttercross Market in West Gate, the site of an old cattle market, has a centrepiece of local stone dating from the 16th century. Mansfield District Council decided to close this section in 2015, merging it into the main market place. Adjacent is Mansfield Library, officially opened by the Queen in 1977 and refurbished for 2012. The old Carnegie Library, founded in 1905 in Leeming Street, was used from 1976 as an arts and performance centre.

Civic Centre offices

The large headquarters of Mansfield District Council occupied part of a former recreation ground at Chesterfield Road South from late 1986. It was opened in 1987 by Princess Anne. Its catering facilities are run by outside contractors.
Potential cost savings were identified. Several changes begun in 2012 led to surplus office space being rented to outside concerns. Collaborating with Ashfield District Council, the legal services of both authorities were combined in existing ADC offices at Kirkby in Ashfield. Their joint regeneration service dates from earlier. The council decided in 2014 to close the Civic Centre counter-payments facility.
Job Centre Plus, an agency within the Department for Work and Pensions, was moved from two town-centre venues from 2018, with re-modelling of the Civic Centre interior ground floor. The vacated offices were intended for redevelopment as housing and retail.
Mansfield Community Partnership, also at the Civic Centre, is a centralised hub for council, police and other bodies in a dedicated town-centre unit.

Employment

, once the United Kingdom's largest independent brewery, was acquired by Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries for £253 million in October 1999. Production of the Mansfield range of ales moved out and the site was later sold to Pubmaster Ltd, but remains available for redevelopment. In the 1980s, Mansfield Bitter was advertised with a photograph of then US President Ronald Reagan and the tagline: "He might be president of the most powerful nation on earth... but he's never had a pint of Mansfield." "Not much matches Mansfield" was also used and became the title for a play in the town as a culmination of the Mansfield Arts Festival.
Mansfield's old-established soft-drinks manufacturer R. L. Jones, with brand names Sunecta and Mandora, was bought by Mansfield Brewery in 1977. A move to a modern factory in Bellamy Road in 1975 released land projected for a high-density housing development known as Layton Burroughs. Mansfield Brewery sold the business in 1988 for £21.5 million to the Scottish drinks company A. G. Barr plc, producer of Irn-Bru, Tizer and Mandora. At the time the firm employed 400 people. Production ceased there in January 2011 when A. G. Barr closed the factory and production to other sites. The brewery production buildings were demolished in late 2008, but five years later, the site remained unsold. The older ornate offices were saved and now house a learning centre.
Many areas near the town and in surrounding countryside still bear marks of coal mining history, a main industry for most of the 20th century. A violent episode in the UK miners' strike occurred in Mansfield on May Day 1984. Most the area's miners had voted against a strike, but the local union initially maintained that the strike was official, to show "solidarity" with strikers in other areas. Having been granted an extra day of leave after the bank holiday by the Coal Board, a group of working miners confronted union officials and violence broke out with striking miners. Mansfield later hosted a breakaway union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, which recruited many who had opposed the 1984–1985 strike. The head stocks close to the village of Clipstone are considered an important local landmark, and community groups are trying to preserve them as a reminder of the area's mining history. As demand for coal fell, Mansfield's many pits wound down and miners moved into other types of job.
Mining subsidence has caused problems for properties around Mansfield. A few streets in and around the town form long rows of terraced houses reminiscent of the affordable housing provided for mine workers in the prime of the industry. Many such were demolished in 2012 in Pleasley Hill, Market Warsop and elsewhere. The Coal Authority is based in the town.

Regeneration

Several urban regeneration projects were planned for Mansfield involving large-scale demolition, but all were deferred due to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and subsequent central-government funding cuts and escalating austerity measures. Mansfield District Council has promoted two new developments. Arrival Square opened in 2008 – an office block by the rail station, tenanted by the Probation Service. Nearby, Queen's Place was completed and opened by the mayor, Tony Egginton, in late 2013, after costing the council £2.4 million. It offered two new ground-floor retail units and six offices in Queen Street between the new transport interchange and the market square.
In February 2014, the town's MP, Sir Alan Meale criticised the council for failing to find tenants before completion and opening. Although it received a local-government award in July 2014, Queen's Place remained empty.
In late 2015, restoration work on the roof and other externals of the historic Town Hall was completed at a cost of £550,000. Mansfield BID staff and other council staff moved elsewhere while the repairs were done. Despite the outlay, Mansfield District Council had no plans for future use of the large building.
Some reconstruction of nearby King's Mill Hospital was completed by 2009. It is near the Mansfield and Ashfield Regeneration Route, which opened in 2004, as a bypass designed to reduce through traffic and improve access by connecting the A617 at Pleasley to the A617 at Rainworth.
In 2009 Mansfield made a bid for city status, appending redevelopment plans for retail, residential and leisure facilities with road improvements gradually being made.

Transport

Railway history

is on the Robin Hood Line, a link connecting with Nottingham and Worksop. From 1964 until the line reopened in 1995, Mansfield was by some definitions the largest town in Britain without a railway station, which was the more remarkable after the town had pioneered the railway in the East Midlands. From 1973 to 1995 the nearby station at Alfreton was named "Alfreton and Mansfield Parkway" to encourage use as a railhead for Mansfield. A Sunday rail service was restored to Mansfield in December 2008.
The town was originally the terminus of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway, built as a horse-drawn plateway in 1819 and one of the first acquisitions of the newly formed Midland Railway. The Midland used the final section to extend its new Leen Valley line to the present station in 1849.
The Midland Railway extended its Rolleston Junction–Southwell branch to Mansfield in 1871, continued the line north to Worksop in 1875, opened a link from Mansfield Woodhouse to Westhouses and Blackwell in 1886, and completed another link from Pleasley through Bolsover to Barrow Hill in 1890. Mansfield became a rail centre of importance, but it was a Midland Railway centre. The Midland Railway monopoly was broken by a locally promoted Mansfield Railway between Kirkby South Junction and Clipstone Junctions opened in stages between 1913 and 1916 for goods trains and in 1917 for Nottingham–Ollerton passenger trains, calling at a second Mansfield passenger station. Though nominally independent, the Mansfield Railway connected at both ends with the Great Central Railway, which worked the trains.
Thus Mansfield had two railway stations: Mansfield Town – the former Midland station on Station Road, near Belvedere Street – and Mansfield Central, the former Mansfield Railway station in Great Central Road, near Ratcliffe Gate. Central station lost its scheduled passenger services at the beginning of 1956 and Town station closed to passengers in 1964, leaving Mansfield without passenger trains until the Robin Hood line restored them in 1995.
A tram service was operated between 1905 and 1932 by Mansfield & District Light Railways.

Today

Buses

Buses in Mansfield are mainly operated by Stagecoach, with Trent Barton and National Express also working the area. Planning permission was given for a new bus station on the former Station Road car park, which was expected to cost £7 million. The old bus station, built in 1977, handled around 1,500 buses and 16,000 passenger arrivals a day, making it the busiest in the county, but with an outdated design and appearance and poor outdoor waiting facilities.
There were good pedestrian links to the pedestrianised town-centre shopping streets, but the rail station was a few hundred yards' walk away. The new bus station addressed the problem, but has proved unpopular with shopkeepers near the old facility, with several claiming marked reductions in trade.
The new bus station and transport interchange opened on 31 March 2013 in a location on a former car park close to the railway station. It is part of a regeneration scheme known as "Gateway To Mansfield", giving visitors a clean and tidy first impression, including buildings with a "themed" use of local sandstone. It was implemented to improve facilities for locals, boost visitors to the town and help step up the local economy.
The new bus station increased passenger safety and provides a more welcoming scene for arriving visitors. It has been hailed as a successful enhancement to Mansfield town centre. Improvements have included an enclosed waiting area, automatic doors for fume reduction and safety, a tourist information centre, electronic bus and rail departure information, toilets and baby-changing facilities. A tower with lift and stairs to an elevated walkway connects it to the railway station.

Road

Mansfield town centre stands in a "bowl", a depression in the River Maun valley from which the town name is derived. A town centre ring-road was created with the old five main roads radiating out: the A60 to the North and South, the A617 to the East and West, and the A38 running to the South-West. An inner ring-road runs one-way around the town's shopping centre, enabling access to car parking and the major roads.
The town is the northern terminus of the A38 running from Bodmin in Cornwall, as the longest A road entirely within England. Mansfield can be reached in some 15 minutes from junctions 27, 28 and 29 of the M1 and is around 18 miles from the A1 at neighbouring Newark-on-Trent.

Rail

Mansfield's two stations, the more central being Mansfield railway station, together with Mansfield Woodhouse railway station in nearby Mansfield Woodhouse, are both on the same line and each served hourly towards Worksop, twice an hour to Nottingham, alongside a service from Nottingham that terminates at Mansfield Woodhouse, which operates hourly. On Sundays, Mansfield Woodhouse railway station is the terminus: no services travel beyond to Worksop. Overall, Mansfield is served by one service an hour calling at Mansfield and terminating at Mansfield Woodhouse, alongside an hourly service from both stations to Nottingham.

Sport

Mansfield is home to Mansfield Town FC, known as the Stags or yellows, which was relegated to the Conference National after 77 years in the Football League at the end of the 2007–2008 season, but returned to the Football League after winning the 2012–2013 Conference National title. Non-League club AFC Mansfield plays in the Forest Town area of Mansfield.
Mansfield Rugby Club is a rugby union club based at Eakring Road and currently plays in Midlands 1 East, a sixth-tier league in the English rugby union system. It won the Notts Cup for five years in succession and for a record 18 times.
Mansfield Giants is Mansfield's Premier Basketball Club, and has a three-star Accreditation and Club Mark from the English Sports Council. The team plays in the England Basketball.
The annual half marathon held for more than 30 years was cancelled after 2011 due to escalating costs, after changes to Health and Safety legislation meant professional services were needed to address road-closure measures, instead of volunteers. Mansfield local business networking group 2020 had hoped to restore a race by September 2014, but this event, reduced in length to 10 kilometres, was postponed, initially until spring 2015, and took place in August.
Angling is well supported in the Mansfield district, where ponds remain from the former textile milling industry.
Tennis is catered for by Mansfield Lawn Tennis Club located at the same site since 1883, with two grass courts and four asphalt courts, three of them floodlit. Further hard-surface courts are found in the district at six Mansfield District Council park locations.
Mansfield is home to Mansfield Roller Derby, Mansfield's premier Flat Track Roller Derby league.
One issue for local residents is Mansfield's lack of a central Leisure Centre. Mansfield District Council decided it would rubber stamp the sale of the existing Leisure Centre and extensive public car park to Tesco, which opened a large Tesco Extra store in 2007. The Council asserted that this would be replaced by a brand new Leisure Centre, but nothing has been built or is planned. It received over £5m from Tesco for the Leisure Centre site, but decided to spend this on refurbishing Sherwood Baths instead.
Mansfield has two indoor swimming centres and a third, smaller pool attached to a school, which has been under threat of closure since 2011. These facilities give Mansfield the largest square meterage of indoor water-sports facilities per capita of any town in the United Kingdom with less than 100,000 inhabitants.
Mansfield is the largest town without a municipal squash court in the whole of its district since the demolition of the former Leisure Centre. The public still holds this against the Council, as the previous Leisure Centre, paid for by the district's council tax payers, has now gone, seemingly for good. Tesco built another store on the town's outskirts some two miles away, demolishing the multi-sports hall and function venue and rebuilding or improving the previous gym, which had been refurbished only a few years earlier.
Despite many so far unfulfilled promises by the town's mayor, the lack of a central Leisure Centre is seen as a contributing factor to the proportion of clinically obese residents in the town: over 15 percentage points above the national average.
Mansfield is one of three outlets for the Nottinghamshire County Council Swim Squad, which competes as Nova Centurion. The Sherwood Swimming Baths adjacent to the former Sherwood Colliery was refurbished and opened in January 2010 as the Rebecca Adlington Swimming Centre. The 25-metre pool was widened at the expense of losing tiered public seating and has a new, small, endless stroke-improvement training pool with variable-resistance water flow. The complex reduces its carbon footprint by using a ground-source heat pump backed by a biomass boiler burning wood pellets prepared from waste by a local wood yard.
At the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, a Mansfield contestant, Rebecca Adlington, won two gold medals, for 400 and 800-metre freestyle swimming. After her record-breaking success, Adlington was welcomed home to Mansfield by thousands lining the streets to applaud as she passed in an open top bus. This culminated in an appearance at the old Town Hall in the Market Square. Her success boosted swimming interest in the area, leading to expansion of swimming classes to encourage young people to begin swimming. At the 2012 Olympic Games in and around London, Adlington won two Bronze medals again for 400 and 800 metres, the best performance of a generally disappointing Team GB swimming squad. She retired from competitive swimming in February 2012.
Mansfield has a Water Meadows swimming complex, which opened during the Christmas holidays of 1990, in Bath Street on the site of the former Mansfield Baths and defunct cattle market. It hosts a gym and a soft-play area for children with an adjoining café, alongside one 25-metre competition pool, two other pools, and a small teaching pool. The leisure lagoon pool has an artificial wave machine operating periodically, and also a slide and a shallow area like a beach. The complex is popular with family groups, and many surrounding schools make use of its facilities.

Parks

Titchfield Park, on the same site as the Water Meadows swimming complex, offers large grassy areas on both sides of the river Maun, crossed by two footbridges. It has a bowls green, hard tennis courts, a basketball court, a children's play area, and many flowerbeds.
Fisher Lane Park nearby stretches from the top of Littleworth through to Rock Hill. It is popular with dog walkers, kite flyers and skaters, as Mansfield District Council installed a concrete skate plaza, causing some local controversy. However, the skate plaza has proved popular with local young people. Some rides and stalls for local children are set up in the park in the summer.
Carr Bank Park, also close to the town, has a rocky grotto, a bandstand and summer flower beds. It has a war memorial built of local sandstone, dedicated to soldiers killed in action since the end of the Second World War, to complement the original setting unveiled after the First War in 1921.

Cemeteries and crematorium

The main cemetery and crematorium occupy a 10-acre site accessed from Derby Road, on the southern edge of town near to the boundary with Ashfield. They share a car park. In late 2015, Mansfield District Council recognised the need for additional spaces and planning consent was obtained. The older part of the cemetery, fronting Nottingham Road and Forest Hill has on-street parking. Site access on foot can be hard due to the steep slope.
The cemetery was opened in 1857 due to insufficient church graveyard space, the mid-to-late Victorian population growth and several then-new churches built with little or no dedicated graveyard areas. A 10-acre extension was made in 1898. The adjacent Mansfield and District Crematorium, with two chapels seating 35 and up to 80, was set up in 1960. and is a responsibility shared between Mansfield District Council, Ashfield District Council and Newark and Sherwood District Council.
There are other cemeteries on the A60 at Mansfield Woodhouse and at Warsop, and off the A617 at Pleasley Hill.

Entertainment

The Palace Theatre in Leeming St is the town's prime entertainment venue. Built as a cinema in 1910 and originally known as the Palace Electric Theatre, it was adapted as a theatre with a proscenium arch, presenting live shows. It was known as the Civic Hall and Civic Theatre before the current name was revived in 1995. With a seating capacity of 534, the theatre is a mid-scale touring venue. It presents a programme of professional and amateur productions and a yearly pantomime.
Mansfield Museum, beside the Palace Theatre in Leeming Street, opened in 1904. and has been based on its present site since 1938. With free entry, it won the Guardian Family-friendly Museum of the Year Award in 2011.
Mansfield was home to Venue 44, a nightclub that gave birth to the superclub Renaissance which was operated there in 1992–1994 by Geoff Oakes and launched the DJ's Sasha, John Digweed, Nigel Dawson and Ian Ossia to global fame. The building was demolished in 2010.
The Old Library near the town centre houses a recording studio, meeting room and 100-seat Studio Theatre. Mansfield also has a large multiplex cinema on a new retail and entertainment park outside of the town centre. The previous ABC town-centre cinema was used as a snooker centre until closure in 2012, but late in 2013 it was converted into a church.
Mansfield Superbowl, a 28-lane alley with hospitality, opened in 1991. Facing closure in 2014, it was sold and refurbished in 2015.
The Intake, a live-music venue in Kirkland Avenue, closed in 2016. The Town Mill, a former waterside mill on the banks of the Maun at the edge of the town centre, was turned into a pub and live music venue in 2002, but closed in 2010, citing the smoking ban, rising beer prices and recession among its reasons for failure.

Sherwood Forest

A few miles outside Mansfield lies Sherwood Forest. Mansfield had an oak tree and a plaque in West Gate to mark what was the centre of Sherwood Forest. Now the tree has been felled and a giant metallic feather has replaced it as a marker. Some residents of the town feel this is an eyesore, and the feather sculpture has been plagued by health and safety problems.

Summer in the Streets

Every year between June and August, Mansfield District Council hosts a Summer in the Streets festival. This consists of various public events held all across the town over many days, such as children's entertainment, fairground rides in the market square, and hands-on workshops for things like crafts and circus skills.
The festival highlight is a final event in Titchfield Park called Party in the Park. Its range of entertainment includes live music acts by local bands, performances from local dance groups, and activities such as face painting. For 2012 and 2013, this culminating event was cancelled for austerity reasons.
On 21 August 2010 the various summer entertainment arranged by Mansfield District Council included the Irish boy band Westlife in a live concert at Field Mill stadium, home to the town's football team, the Stags. This was the first big-name act to visit the town.

Media

The local newspapers are the Chad and Mansfield and Ashfield News Journal, a community newspaper. Mansfield's radio station, Mansfield 103.2, broadcasts from Fishpond Hill in Skegby Lane, from a transmitter that also broadcasts Mansfield versions of Nottingham stations Radio Nottingham and Capital FM, on 95.5 and 96.5 FM respectively. DAB broadcasts from Fishpond Hill began on 21 July 2006 with the NOW Nottingham multiplex. Subsequently the Digital One and BBC National muxes were added.
Television reception in Mansfield is often poor due to its location between regions. Historically, Mansfield has been part of the BBC North and Yorkshire Television regions. Between 1965 and 1974, some homes in Mansfield even received Anglia Television.
Since the 1995 arrival of Diamond Cable, BBC East Midlands and ITV Central East has been provided, and since regionalisation of SKY digital, many residents now receive BBC East Midlands and ITV Central, which are the default channels for this area and appear on channels 101 and 103.
Mansfield receives its television signals from various transmitters: Waltham from East Midlands, Emley Moor from South and West Yorkshire, and Belmont from East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. This meant that the celebrations for Rebecca Adlington's success at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, though covered officially by East Midlands Today, could be shown on both East Midlands Today and Look North'', so that all the Mansfield area could watch.

Politics

Mansfield has a directly elected mayor, as one of only 16 places with one in the United Kingdom. Tony Egginton was Mayor of Mansfield from October 2002 until retirement in May 2015, being replaced at scheduled elections by a fellow candidate for the Mansfield Independent Forum political party, Kate Allsop. Much was said of the first Executive Mayor, but during his time in office, Mansfield struggled with local land development and many projects across the region faltered.
These include the derelict Mansfield General Hospital site, which in 2013 was purchased for £1.8 million, paid for by local residents through their council tax, and with further anticipated demolition costs of £940,000. Despite the purchase, the mayor and his council have no specific plans for the site. The old Mansfield Brewery remains as an abandoned space since its demolition.
Gateway redevelopment of the Mansfield Shoe Company site, after failure of the original developer, Highgrange Homes Ltd, was worked on in 2013 and 2014 to finish and sell the residential apartments. The ground-floor units for retail sales have been externally closed with large windows and access doorways, but remain unlet.
A council town-centre office/retail development on the site of the old Queen's Head pub, costing £2.4 million, was opened by the mayor, Tony Egginton, in November 2013. The council was criticised in February 2014 by the town's M.P., Sir Alan Meale, for failing to find tenants before the completion and opening. The building remained empty at the time of receiving a local-government award in July 2014.
The Mayor was criticised by some councillors and residents for placing too much focus on self-publicity, as opposed to publicity for the town. The issue was raised again after his prominent role in Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington's homecoming ceremony, after her Gold Medal successes at the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.
In April 2017, Sophie Whitby was elected to the Mansfield district as a Member of Youth Parliament, on a manifesto that included promoting equality for the LGBT community.
Benjamin Bradley has been the constituency Member of Parliament since May 2017, succeeding Sir Alan Meale, who served the town for 30 years.
From 2010 the Parliamentary Constituency boundaries were realigned to include areas to the north of Mansfield around Warsop, previously part of the Bassetlaw constituency.

In the news

, in Lady Chatterley's Lover, described Mansfield as "that once romantic now utterly disheartening colliery town".
The 2005 and 2007 editions of Channel 4's programme The Best and Worst Places to Live in the UK named Mansfield as the sixth and ninth worst place to live in Britain respectively, largely due to poor school performance. The town did not feature in the list for 2019.
In June 2014, husband and wife Christopher and Susan Edwards were jailed for murdering the woman's parents, William and Patricia Wycherley, whose bodies lay undiscovered in their back garden for 15 years. The couple had stolen thousands of pounds, siphoned off the Wycherleys' pensions and sold their house, amounting to nearly £300,000. The bodies were found after the Edwards gave themselves up, having spent a year in France knowing the DWP intended to interview the murdered Mr Wycherley, who would have been approaching his 100th birthday. Susan Edwards, a former librarian, had written Christmas cards and letters to relatives telling them her parents were travelling in Ireland "because of the good air" and told neighbours they were in Blackpool or Morecambe. The Edwards were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years for the murders, concurrent with 9-year sentences for disposing of the bodies and theft.
On 30 May 2015, 13-year-old Amber Peat went missing from home after returning from a family holiday. On 2 June her body was found in an area off Westfield Lane, Mansfield, less than a mile from her home. The cause of her death was hanging. An inquest was held at Nottingham Council House in February 2019, with the assistant-Coroner recording a narrative verdict.

Notable people

People with Wikipedia pages, in alphabetical order:
Mansfield has been officially twinned with Heiligenhaus in Germany since 1974.
The following entries can be seen in a Mansfield-based, self-published website: