the mid-15th century, with a later wing added in the 18th century. A fire has damaged the building, which is being restored and modernised. Growth A grammar school was founded in Normanton by John Freeston (now the 'Parish Rooms'..later moved to the site of the, Normanton Junior School on Church Lane) in 1592, but the town remained very small until it became the focus of several railway lines in the mid-19th century. Work began in 1837 under the supervision of George Stephenson on the construction of the North Midland Railway from Derby to Leeds. This was soon followed by an addition to the York and North Midland Railway from York and then the Manchester and Leeds Railway from Manchester which all extended to Normanton thereby giving the town access to much of the country. The Leeds and Manchester lines crossed a stretch across the Pennines and at the time had the world's longest railway station platform at Normanton, a quarter of a mile long. The station was, for the next ten years or so, the most important in England, employing over 700 people who looked after the station's 700,000 passengers a year. In Victorian times Normanton station was one of the most important stations in Northern England, and Queen Victoria stopped over in the Station Hotel. The town also served as an important part of the transport infrastructure for national and local industries including coal and bricks, although most of this was lost during the 1950s and 1960s with the last remaining operational brickworks eventually closing in the mid-1990s. There were three brickworks in town which were all built within the small area of Newland, taking advantage of the abundance of clay from the area. A fourth works was founded in the 1890s by a Thomas Kirk from Nottingham, who had heard rumours that Normanton was rapidly turning into an important junction on the railways. Both Kirk and his sons used their life savings and formed the Normanton Brick Company at nearby Altofts which finally closed in 2011 The coming of the railways enabled the locally mined coal to be sent across the country. Demand soon outstripped supply and many more shafts were sunk to reach the coal seams under the town. In 1871 Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, visited Normanton with his Empress and gave his name (in a slightly altered form) to the Don Pedro Colliery at