IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Skegby Road, SUTTON-IN-ASHFIELD, NG17 2PL

  This photograph is facing in the direction of car parking at the northern end of Skegby Road. Some 120m ahead is the first of the car parking areas (to the left) and an access path to the visitor centre (to the right). Further ahead still (some 280m) is a playing field within the park boundary. Some 240m behind the viewpoint is what Image

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.

  This northerly facing photograph shows one of the access paths to the Brierley Forest visitor centre, which can be seen ahead. Parking at the centre itself is reserved for staff and disabled visitors. Immediately behind the viewpoint is one of the visitor car parking areas at the northern end of Skegby Road. To the right of the viewpoint is a footpath that leads over what Image to Image Some 150m to the left of the viewpoint, having passed through more car parking, is access to a Image within the park boundary. See this photograph by Alan Heardman, which shows the same view before the fencing on the right was added:- Image See also this photograph by Trevor Rickard:- Image

Another view of figures near Brierley Forest Park Visitors Centre.

Chalet-style building providing a cafe and information point. http://www.ashfield-dc.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/leisure-and-culture/tourism-and-travel/tourist-information-centres-/brierley-forest-park-visitor-centre-/

The sculpture commemorates the miners who died in the Sutton Colliery disaster on 21st February 1957. This sculpture and the memorial stone have recently replaced a previous similar work Image

The park was created on the site of Sutton Colliery, which closed in 1989. The sculptures, by Robert Koenig depict the five miners who died in the Sutton Colliery Disaster. 25 men suffered multiple burns in an underground explosion, 5 of whom subsequently died. There are only four figures in the memorial though there is a patch of bare ground where a fifth previously stood, presumably moved for repair.