Clipstone

Clipstone in north Nottinghamshire is a small ex-coal mining village built on the site of an old army base and close to the site of a medieval royal palace. The population of the civil parish was 3,469 at the 2001 census, increasing to 4,665 at the 2011 census. Clipstone is a small village in north-west Nottinghamshire. The earliest historical reference to the settlement is in the Domesday Book of 1086, where the village is mentioned as "Clipestune". Subsequent written sources use the forms "Clipestone", "Clippeston", "Clipiston". The place-name Clipstone seems to contain an Old Norse personal name, Klyppr, with tun (Old English), an enclosure or farmstead, so 'Klyppr's farm or settlement'. The earliest date-able material from Clipstone is from the Bronze Age. These pieces of material were a spearhead and an arrowhead. There is also a suspected ring ditch in the vicinity of New Clipstone which is assumed to be a ploughed out round barrow. The National Mapping Project data as provided by English Heritage shows a number of cropmarks recorded from aerial photography in the northern quarter of Clipstone parish, representing rectilinear field systems associated with smaller stock enclosures and perhaps domestic sites. Typologically, and from their orientation, it is assumed that these are part of the brickwork plan field system from the late Iron Age, which stretches across the Sherwood Sandstones. Pottery of the period is known from Clipstone due to Philip Rahtz's excavation in 1956 and Trent and Peak Archaeology's watching brief and fieldwalking in 1991, however the context of the finds has never been understood. There have also been metal detector finds within the parish of two Roman brooches and a small coin hoard and arrowhead. The adjacent parish of Mansield Woodhouse contains a suspected Roman road (Leeming Lane), with an associated marching camp at Roman Bank. Further to the north-west a small villa site was exposed in 1780 by the antiquarian Major Hayman Rooke.