Shirebrook is a town in the Bolsover district in Derbyshire, England. Close to the boundaries with the districts of Mansfield and Bassetlaw of Nottinghamshire, it had a population of 13,300 in 2001, reducing to 9,760 at the 2011 Census. It is on the B6407, and close to the A632 road, between Mansfield and Bolsover. The town is served by Shirebrook railway station, on the Robin Hood Line. Economy History According to David Mills in A Dictionary of British Place-Names, the area was first named in records in 1202 written in Old English as Scirebroc. This can be interpreted as Boundary or Bright Brook. Prior to the intense and swift development of the Colliery at the turn of the 20th century, Shirebrook, even as late as 1872 it was little more than a chapelry of the larger Pleasley. Wilsons' Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870–72 describes "SHIREBROOK, a chapelry in Pleaseley parish, Derby; 3¾ miles NNW of Mansfield r. station. It was constituted in 1849, and it has a post-office under Mansfield. Pop., 342. Houses, 70. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value, £90.* Patron, the Rector of Pleaseley. The church was built in 1843." Shirebrook Colliery was sunk in 1896–1897 by the Shirebrook Coal and Iron company on land owned by the Duke of Devonshire, Joseph Paget (a Pleasley Mills partner and the builder of Stuffynwood Hall), and the Nicholson and Fowler farming families. Professor Arnold Lupton of Sheffield was the mining engineer. The sinking of two shafts, plus a pumping shaft, was based on independent surveys by Henry Hall and Matthew Fisher, managers of working collieries. The shafts, wide, met the 'Top Hard' seam at . By 1897, a 'model village' was already being built close to the colliery to house workers. The Derbyshire Times of 30 July 1897 reported that "About half a mile away a model village is springing up, some 150 houses have already been erected and about 420 are to be built." Shirebrook Colliery operated in the town until April 1993. It had previously been linked underground to nearby Pleasley Colliery. The workforce was about evenly split during the strike of 1984–85, leading to deep community divisions between strikers and workers, and briefly earned the nickname "the Belfast of England". In addition to two ongoing fabrication-engineering businesses at nearby Langwith, Shirebrook has a large furniture retailer. Regeneration The 93-acre