Memories of Mansfield (2023)

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Our Mansfield home

In September 1980 I left Sheffield with a shiny new Librarianship qualification and went to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire where I had been offered a job in the Central Library. I had started going out with John during my course (see How we met) and he was still working in Sheffield. However, Mansfield was commutable (just) and after a few months of grim bedsits for me we found a flat suitable for both of us in the house above and moved in at the beginning of 1981. This was our first home together and we got married while living there. We left in the summer of 1982 when I got a new job in Doncaster which was serendipitous, because around the same time our landlady announced that she wanted to recombine the flats into one house and sell it.

Neither of us had ever been back until July 2023 when, on our way between friends in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, we decided to see how the town had changed in the intervening 41 years. The house certainly looked better kept than when it was flats.

Four Seasons Shopping Centre and Mansfield Library

The other must-see, of course, was the Library, still located in the Four Seasons Shopping Centre. In 1980 it was very new and considered state-of-the-art. What would it be like now?

Mansfield Library: internal panorama

The same but different! The library had moved with the times with what was clearly a fairly recent makeover (the staff member I spoke to thought about 10 years before). The panorama above was taken from the café on the mezzanine floor, which in my day housed the Local History Collection, now much smaller and located downstairs. There were many more general books in the 1980s, arranged in serried ranks, and the Children’s Library, now integrated, was in a separate room. One of my tasks had been buying records and cassette tapes for the Music Library and, understandably, these had completely disappeared. So less, but maybe more relevant stock? I don’t know, but on the whole, I rather liked the feeling of spaciousness, the curved bookcases, and the attractive way of displaying subjects.

Service desk
Gardening section

Having ticked off the two essentials, we went for a wander. I admit we always thought of Mansfield as a bit of a dump and a cultural desert, but looking at it afresh (and I have no idea what it would be like to live there now) it seemed like a pleasant market town.

Market Place and Bentinck Memorial
Town Hall
Market Place and Moot Hall
Moot Hall detail

There was so much I had forgotten, or never noticed. This pump with its connection to Methodism, for example. As a daughter of the manse how had I ever missed that?

Westgate Pump
Westgate Pump

I did remember the Old Library, still bitterly regretted by some of the less forward-looking members of staff in my day.

Mansfield Old Library
Mansfield Old Library

Bridge Street was familiar, but somehow much more attractive than in my memories.

Bridge Street Tavern
Bridge Street Methodist Church
Old sundial
Town Mill
Town Mill

Looking up Church Street we spotted a sculpture that definitely wasn’t there in our day. Installed in 2007 and known as the Leaning Man its official title is Amphitheatre. Sculptor David A. Annand says the tie-wearing man is supposed to be “a council officer struggling to keep up with the crumbling infrastructure” as it depicts a man trying to hold up a small amphitheatre where the public can sit (so a bench, Jude?) It’s a nod to the regeneration of Mansfield in the 2000s that apparently involved many art projects. So things have looked up!

Amphitheatre by David Annand
Railway viaduct

It wasn’t the first new sculpture we had spotted: near our old house was this tribute to the British miner commissioned by the local council and erected in 2003. The sculptor is Nikolaos Kotziamanis. At its peak in the early 20th century, the mining industry in Nottinghamshire employed over 35000 men. The last pit closed in 2015.

by Nikolaos Kotziamanis
by Nikolaos Kotziamanis

One last shot with the library in the centre, taken from the multi-storey car park as we prepared to set off for Derby. I was glad to have made this trip down Memory Lane, but my curiosity is now sated and I don’t think we’ll go back.

Mansfield rooftops
England, Family history, UK ,

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  2. Pingback: This week’s small pleasures #440 – Thistles and Kiwis

  3. How fun to visit Mansfield with you and it is amazing to go back and see things we missed or just see things differently.
    Also, how fun the library was updated about 10 years ago – although I do wonder if anyone is preserving enough records and cassette tapes so future generations will know what they are…

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  4. I would love to live in your old home if it was a proper house, it looks lovely. Unless I went to places where I spent brief holidays as a child, the details of which I don’t remember anyway, there’s nowhere I could go revisit to relive any memories – certainly not my home town as I still live here. One place I could never revisit though is my childhood home – it’s only a couple of miles from where I live now but for reasons which are too personal and too upsetting I would never want to go back, I’d rather keep the happy memories.

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  5. The library created quite a stir in the East Midlands in the 1980s, but sad to say I never got to see it.

    I do like the statue of the coalminer – good to see the area’s history being honoured in this way.

    I was intrigued to see that after leaving Mansfield you set off for Derby. I hope you will write about it, as it’s my local city and the place where I worked for the last half of my career!

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  8. It is so interesting to revisit old stomping grounds. I’ve had that experience several times when I’ve visited the two universities I attended… it was hard to believe that I used to be as young as the students I saw around me. How nice that you had the chance to experience Mansfield again and see all the changes.

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  10. It’s certainly interesting going back to somewhere you used to live, many mixed feelings. Especially the first home together as a couple. Though for me I have always been happy with our current home.

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  12. Interesting how things can change or stay the same in places we haven’t visited in a very long time. Or things we don’t even remember.

    I had been to Milan in 1980 and certainly didn’t remember much of the city when we went back this year. I don’t even remember how long we had stayed in the city and I have very few pictures of it (I wasn’t much of a photographer at the time and was using a film camera). I should really find my diary of the trip (hidden somewhere in a box we never unpacked when we moved to Montreal) to jug my memory. (Suzanne)

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  14. Hi Anabel – so interesting to see … having come back in from SA, and then seeing what’s happened in the last 30+ years just amazes me – museums, galleries, arts areas and some town centres have been informatively upgraded. Here we’re ‘fighting’ the alteration of our town centre to tacky centre v keeping the Victorian and Edwardian feel of the town, while also allowing changes – eg the Towner and the sea front. Mansfield looks quite ‘go-ahead’ now – but as you say enough is enough … cheers Hilary

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  15. When I saw the picture of your first home my initial reaction was wow, how did you afford that? Then I read your text. 😃
    As for the monument to the miners, a proud history perhaps, but not in 1984

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  16. Such a lovely and thoughtful walk down memory lane! It’s fascinating to see how Mansfield has evolved—familiar yet transformed. Your reflections on the library were especially touching, and the new sculptures add such character to the town. Thanks for sharing this meaningful glimpse into your past and the place that shaped it.

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  17. Not an area I know at all but the house looks nice. I’ve always loved books though and they have been a big part of my life almost since birth. I can still remember certain books I read at five on my own if they left a big enough impression on me. It used to be libraries but now its charity shops as its easier and you can keep them. Downside is I now have well over 100 favourite books and as many DVD’s and I keep promising myself I’ll hand them in for someone else to enjoy… but never do enough to make any kind of dent in my collection as I keep finding brand new favourites.

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  19. I think libraries in general have changed a lot in recent years, Anabel. I was in our Tavira library today (for the first time since Covid!- it’s the wrong side of town for me is my best excuse) and it was looking very bright and smart, and I know my old Hartlepool library had undergone a few changes when I was there last.

    As for Mansfield, I’ve not been past the bus station. The National Express coach used to pull in there on my way to/from Nottingham. And you seem to have a ‘happy ever after’… xx

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  20. Sometimes it isn’t a good idea to look back but your visit to Mansfield turned out well! Interesting to discover new things and find the old ones rather different from what you remembered. More to Mansfield these days than in the 70’s!

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  21. I suspect it hasn’t changed much, but rather, your perspective of it changed? You’d been bigger and brighter, and now it seems like a nice place to have started from. Does that sound about right?

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  22. Your old house / flat looks quite nice. I don’t know Mansfield, but another thing we have in common is Nottinghamshire as I lived in Retford on two separate occasions. Once between the ages of two and eight and then briefly in 1984 when I was pretty much homeless. I don’t tend to go back to anywhere I have lived, other than Doncaster, but only because Alex still lived there. I do know (from looking on Google maps) that the rhubarb field behind my family house (10 – 17yrs) in Wakefield is now a housing estate!

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    • The house was lovely to look at from the outside but the flat wasn’t great! It was very cold for one thing. When the water hit the bottom of the bath in winter it froze. We have driven into Doncaster and looked at our old flat from the outside but not explored the town. Maybe next time we are down that way!

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  23. It’s always iteresting to go back, and you seem to have found a town in better heart than when you lived there. It was the same for me. I started out in Portsmouth (with 1st husband) then often called the Only Northern Town in the South. It did have a somewhat northern industrial air. But now it’s changed out of all recognition, with lots going on apparently and looking more prosperous. I’d even go back for a holiday there now!

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  24. Can be interesting to revisit places from the past but then again on occasions not brilliant! Anyway, you’ve satisfied your curiosity and now don’t need to return

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  25. Me again! Comments are closed on your ‘How we met’ post so I thought I’d comment here instead. I enjoyed reading the tale and thought I’d share my own.

    We have several things in common – we both met our husbands while studying librarianship and both married in 1981 (our anniversary is September, as I think you know from all my Paris posts). Also, I too had a boyfriend when I met Chris – in fact that’s how we met, as Chris was my boyfriend’s best friend at uni! Like you we became part of a wider friends group, but there our stories diverge. I stayed with that boyfriend through my three years at uni (we’d met halfway through the first year) and for a year or more afterwards, in a long-distance and not very satisfactory relationship. Chris meanwhile had spent his third year of studying abroad as his degree was in German and librarianship (I paired mine with English), and then returned to Aber for a fourth year. Following that he got a job in London with the BBC. We’d stayed in touch, mainly through my boyfriend, so I invited him to a party I was hosting with my two housemates. We started to see each other quite regularly and after a few months friendship changed to romance, I ditched the boyfriend (should have done so a at least a year before that!) and we were engaged a year later and married a year after that 🙂

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  26. It’s always interesting to go back, and I’m pleased you found new things (or overlooked things) to enjoy in Mansfield. As a librarian myself I was particularly interested in your views on the changes in the library. I was actually there a few years ago as I did some work for Nottinghamshire libraries when working as a consultant and we had several meetings in that library. It looked pretty much as it does now (that would have been around 2018 I think). I think I spot the hand of ‘Opening the Book’ (do you know them?) in that refurbishment. I too like this sort of ‘look’ for a library, rather than over-crammed with stock. I fought many a battle in my library management days with staff who wanted to hang on to every book regardless of its relevance / levels of use etc!

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    • Oh that’s interesting to know! I don’t know Opening the Book but I was impressed with the look of the place. I do know the battles about hanging on to out of date books. I mentored a school librarian for chartership once and was appalled when I visited her library (not her fault, I hasten to add, she had just gone there and was battling to update things with not much money).

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  27. Always interesting to go back to places from the past. Nice that this trip rounded off with you being glad you’d gone back. The story of how you met is lovely, ‘on stage visuals’ and all!

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