The best city hikes and walks around Ogston Reservoir

Historical Industrial Area Including current photos (2025) of Clay Cross Iron Works and Tunnel Associated with George Stephenson

A park donated by Robert Watchorn, in tribute to his wife. There is much more information about the whole Watchorn complex & development and about Watchorn himself on the English Heritage Pastscape website. His story takes him from a cottage on the site where the church was later built and working in Shirland pit to America where he became Secretary of the National Miners Union of America, with a gold medal for his bravery during one mining disaster. He was instrumental in passing the Factory Act, which prohibited children under 14 years of age from working 12 hour shifts in the factories. In 1905 President Roosevelt appointed him Commissioner of Immigration on Ellis Island, New York. By 1916 he was President of his own Watchorn Gas and Oil Company in Oklahoma City, which gave him the wealth to endow various churches, colleges and libraries – including in his home town of Alfreton.

Alfreton’s Watchorn Methodist Church is part of the Watchorn Estate, built by local benefactor Robert Watchorn (1858-1944) in memory of his mother, his son Ewart and Abraham Lincoln, whom he considered the greatest man ever born.

The tunnel was built by the North Midland Railway to carry its line under the town. The North Portal is in stone, and consists of an elliptical arch with rounded mouldings, over which is an embattled parapet. The arch is flanked by tapering octagonal columns with moulded string courses, slit and arrow windows, and embattled parapets.

The war memorial is a statue in white marble depicting a soldier with a rifle in front of a tree stump. On the pedestal are bronze plaques with inscriptions and the names of those lost in the two World Wars.

It was built to the designs of the architect Henry Isaac Stevens by the contractors Samuel Watts of Derby and Mr. Kirkland of Clay Cross. It was consecrated by the Bishop of Lichfield on 25 January 1851. The spire was completed in 1856 by Mr. Watt of Ashover. The weather vane was placed on the top of the spire in May 1856 by W.J. Mackarsie to mark the conclusion of the Crimean War. The vestry was added in 1859 by George Edmund Street. The chancel of the church which had been closed for the building of the vestry, was reopened by the bishop of the diocese on 20 March 1859. The south aisle contains a memorial window by Morris & Co. to William Howe, who invented link motion for railway locomotives.

Sleetmoor Wood is a 13.5 hectare mixed species woodland planted after the landscaping of the spoil heaps of the former Swanwick Colliery and completed in 1981.

The Cotes Parkland was sold off in small plots during the nineteenth century when the area was being mined for coal and ironstone. Three of the ponds were constructed during the nineteenth century as a result of mining operations, but it is thought that pond 3 is considerably older. In 1942 the area was re-landscaped for public use by Italian prisoners of war and subsequently became very popular for walking and picnicking. The creation of Cotes Park Industrial Estate in the 1970s has isolated the ponds within an industrial and residential landscape. They fell into disuse and decay and suffered from pollution. In the late 1980’s the borough council improved the ponds, which encouraged angling, walking and horse riding, there is an active friends group who have raised funds in partnership with Palmer Morewood Angling Club to install new paths and fishing pegs, the Borough Council have also improved the infrastructure and work with the Environment Agency to combat pollution.