Creswell Model Village

Creswell Model Village is an arts and crafts style model village in the village of Creswell, Derbyshire, England. The pit village was built in 1895 by the Bolsover Colliery Company to designs by architect Percy B. Houfton for the workers of Creswell Colliery on land leased from the Welbeck Estate. Influenced by garden village principles, it provided the workers with modern facilities; it had a tramway to deliver coal to the houses. Designed around a large oval village green with an access road through the centre, the houses are of varying styles. The Model as it is known, has been refurbished.The village is within the parish of Elmton-with-Creswell in the district of Bolsover in northeast Derbyshire.HistoryThe Bolsover Colliery Company acquired ten acres of land in Creswell from the Duke of Portland on which to build a village to house its colliery employees. The village comprises 280 cottages built in two circles, an inner and an outer, around a large green with shrubberies and a bandstand. The inner-circle cottages faced the green and their back yards faced those of the outer circle. All the houses were of two storeys and had five or six rooms and were lit by electricity. All the houses had small front gardens facing either the green or surrounding the outer circle. Between the circles was a 15 yard road with a tram track used to transport coal to the colliers' cellars. In the back yards were enclosed ashpit lavatories that were emptied weekly at night by staff employed by the colliery company. The night soil was taken away on the tram line.