Anston
Encyclopedia
The village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

s of North Anston and South Anston are the principal constituents of the civil parish of North and South Anston, in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham
Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham
The Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham is a metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. It is named for its largest town, Rotherham, but also spans the outlying towns of Maltby, Rawmarsh, Swinton, Wath-upon-Dearne, as well as a suburban and rural element composed of hills, escarpments and...

 in South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...

, England. The area is generally known simply as Anston, although the Post Office now officially recognises South Anston in its own right (this change occurred due to postal confusion with nearby Aston and also because of petitions of local residents). Anston is located on the A57
A57 road
The A57 is a major road in England. It runs east from Liverpool to Lincoln, via Warrington, Cadishead, Irlam, Patricroft, Eccles, Salford and Manchester, then through the Pennines over the Snake Pass , around the Ladybower Reservoir, through Sheffield and past Worksop...

, midway between Sheffield and Worksop
Worksop
Worksop is the largest town in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England on the River Ryton at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. It is about east-south-east of the City of Sheffield and its population is estimated to be 39,800...

. It has a population of 9,559.

Anston was already established as a settlement by the time of the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 (1086), when North and South Anston (Anestan and Litelanstan) were under the ownership of Roger de Busli. The name Anston is thought to derive from "an stan" (a stone) as opposed to anything based on the suffix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...

 -ton, and there is much evidence of quarry
Quarry
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, and gravel. They are often collocated with concrete and asphalt plants due to the requirement...

ing in the area. Anston, and neighbouring Dinnington make up a 3.5 km strip of urban development stranded amidst a sea of agricultural land, and its presence and growth owe much to quarrying. The original interest for the area (beyond Anston's agricultural uses) was the sandy "Anstone" magnesian limestone
Dolostone
Dolostone or dolomite rock is a sedimentary carbonate rock that contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite. In old U.S.G.S. publications it was referred to as magnesian limestone. Most dolostone formed as a magnesium replacement of limestone or lime mud prior to lithification. It is...

, but the real growth in Anston's population was more due to the sinking of the Dinnington Main Colliery
Dinnington Main Colliery
Dinnington Main Colliery was a coal mine situated in the village of Dinnington, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire.Until the coming of the colliery Dinnington was a mainly agricultural village with a small amount of quarrying in the area....

 in the early 20th century. Anston is Part of Rotherham Borough Council for the Anston and Woodsetts Ward. It is represented by the three Labour Councillors, Darren J L Hughes, Judy Dalton and Jo Burton.

Anston railway station
Anston railway station
Anston railway station was situated on the Great Central and Midland Joint Railway line between the villages of North Anston and South Anston near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England....

 opened on 20 May 1912 and closed on 2 December 1929.

North Anston

North Anston is located at about 53° 21' 20" N, 1° 13' W and merges seamlessly into the town of Dinnington to the north. Today, it is largely a commuter base for Sheffield, Worksop and Rotherham, and is mainly made up of sub—urban housing estates. The picturesque "old village" at the south-east however retains its green
Village green
A village green is a common open area which is a part of a settlement. Traditionally, such an area was often common grass land at the centre of a small agricultural settlement, used for grazing and sometimes for community events...

, and the village well
Water well
A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...

s. The surrounding landscape contains several disused quarries: the plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...

s to the east, and Greenlands Park to the west being prime examples.

There are currently two pubs in North Anston: the Little Mester on Nursery Road and the Cutler on Woodsetts Road.

North Anston is home to the Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife and Falconry Centre (http://www.butterflyhouse.co.uk), a popular attraction seeing around 80,000 visitors every year.
It is also home to the limestone gorge of Anston Stones Wood, a Site of Special Scientific Interest
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

.Anston stones wood stretches across the border of South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. The wood is believed to be part of a mediaeval smuggling route. Evidence of this has been found in the valley an example of this is Dead Man's Cave, a large cave carved out of the limestone used for hiding goods.

South Anston

South Anston is located at about 53°21′50"N 1°13′20"W, and is separated from North Anston by the Anston Brook, the A57 and a freight railway-line. It is more rural than its northern partner, though it still has its fair share of suburban sprawl. South Anston contains the parish church of St. James, and two Methodist chapels (dating from 1871 and 1935). It also contains Anston's working quarries which continue to mine stone for the building industry.

There are two pubs of note in South Anston: the Loyal Trooper and the Leeds Arms.

To the south of the village lies the Chesterfield Canal. It was from a dock just to the south of Dog Kennel Lane that stone taken from quarries in North Anston was transported to London for the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament following the fire in the 1830s. The blocks of stone were taken by horse-drawn sled to the canal, then taken down to West Stockwith where they were transferred to sailing barges for the journey to London.
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