IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Mill Lane, SUTTON-IN-ASHFIELD, NG17 2NJ

A plot of rough ground until recently, this brown-field corner site at the junction of Skegby Road with the B6026 (Sutton Road) is being used to host the new £2.6m, two-storey Huthwaite Medical Centre. When completed in "Spring 2013" it will replace the G.P. practice premises on nearby New Street and it will include an on-site retail pharmacy. A two-three minute walk down Skegby Road, past the parked cars, leads to The Brierley Forest Park visitors' centre on the edge of this large nature reserve. The colliery on which the reserve was developed was known locally as "Brierley Pit" because many of the first miners came from Brierley Hill in Staffordshire in the early 1870s.

Off Sutton Road.

Mill Lane, a reverse L-shaped unsurfaced track, links Sutton Road (the B6026) and Common Road (B6027). On the left is a secondary entrance to Huthwaite Cemetery. The gates are open during its opening hours but only to pedestrians as vehicules are no longer permitted to use the track. Huthwaite Cemetery was formally opened in 1888 to cater for the burial of local people once the graveyard of the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Sutton was full. In 1912, and again in 1915, Huthwaite Urban District Council purchased additional land (seen here) on the site of a former farm, Mill House Farm. The farm house faced this lane and parts of this stone wall once served as one of the farm's boundary walls. Use of the word "mill" stems from the existence of a windmill on top of the hill that forms the main part of the cemetery.

Looking east near its junction with Newcastle Street.

View towards The Common.

The entrance from Sutton Road, with a small car park leading to a footpath into the park proper.

Off Sutton Road.

Looking west towards Columbia Street. This park is maintained by Ashfield District Council (see http://www.ashfield-dc.gov.uk/residents/waste-and-environment/environment/parks-and-open-spaces/outdoor-sport.aspx ).

"The Huthwaite (miners') Welfare (recreation) Ground" is sandwiched between Columbia Street and Mill Lane, an unsurfaced track from where this picture was taken. Both of these plummet downhill from the main road that passes through Huthwaite i.e. the B6026. This land was donated for community use by the New Hucknall Colliery Company and the original access to it when it first opened in 1920 was via a set of gates off Columbia Street. The newer 'main entrance', off the B6026, was created later. A path, beneath this one, connected these two thoroughfares and was regularly walked by coal miners going to and from the New Hucknall Colliery. a miners welfare sports ground, pavilion and recreation ground in Columbia Street, Sutton Road.