Bolsover, Derbyshire, England, United Kingdom

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Bolsover is a market town and the administrative centre of the Bolsover District, Derbyshire, England. It is 145 miles (233 km) from London, 18 miles (29 km) from Sheffield, 26 miles (42 km) from Nottingham and 27 miles (43 km) from Derby. It is the main town in the Bolsover district.

The civil parish for the town is called Old Bolsover. It includes the town and the New Bolsover model village, along with Hillstown, Carr Vale, Shuttlewood, Stanfree, Oxcroft, and Whaley.

Bolsover, along with several nearby villages, is situated in the north-east of the county of Derbyshire. It is the main town in the District of Bolsover, which is an electoral constituency and part of Derbyshire.

Economy The major industry of the area used to be coal mining, but this has declined throughout all of Britain. The two main collieries closed in 1993. Markham Colliery, west of the town, closed on 2 July 1993. Bolsover Colliery, one of the five mines owned by the Bolsover Colliery Company closed on 7 May 1993. The Bolsover Colliery Company was one of the companies in the original FT 30 list of companies. The other main employer was the Coalite and Chemical Company, which produced smokeless fuel and chemicals from coke and was founded in 1937, and moved its main headquarters from London to Bolsover in 1952. It was closed in 2004 after a decline in demand for solid fuel, which had left the company and its many subsidiaries deeply in debt. Its production of chemicals used to produce Agent Orange in the Vietnam War and its environmental impact on surrounding communities of Duckmanton, Shuttlewood, New Bolsover and Bolsover itself had rendered it a controversial company.

Another significant local employer was The Bolsover Hosiery Company Ltd, which was established in 1951 by Bolsover Urban District Council. The main factory site on Oxcroft Lane employed approximately 500 people at its peak in the late 1990s. It underwent a succession of takeovers, eventually becoming part of Courtald's Textiles. The company was taken over by the Sara Lee conglomerate and the factory closed in 2000 with the loss of approximately 350 jobs.