Bolsover is mentioned in
Domesday Book in 1086, named as
Belesovre, where it is described as the property of
William Peverel (or "Peveril"). The description refers to the villans, the ploughs, ) of meadow and woodland pasture, which is given as two leagues by a league. Bolsover became the seat of the Peverel family and in the 12th century a keep was built. The present castle was erected in 1613. In 1657, the leading Royalist
William Cavendish, 1st Marquess of Newcastle, published his book
La Methode et Invention nouvelle de dresser les Chevaux, written in exile in
Antwerp during the
Cromwellian Protectorate. This was translated in 1743 to
A General System of Horsemanship in All its Branches. It covered the dressage of horses, at his 'Bolsouer', Welbeck Abbey, and Antwerp stables and contains engravings attributed to
Abraham van Diepenbeeck showing Newcastle on a horse ('Monsieur le Marquis a Cheval') and views of his estates, including Bolsover. The district of Bolsover is notable for three sites of historical importance: •
Bolsover Castle: an early-17th century castle, which lies on the earthworks and ruins of the 12th-century medieval castle •
Creswell Crags, home to Britain's only known Palaeolithic cave art •
Creswell Model Village, an example of early-20th century design from the
model village movement. In
chronostratigraphy, the British
sub-stage (formerly 'stage') of the
Carboniferous period, the 'Bolsovian' derives its name from a geological exposure at the
River Doe Lea, Bolsover.
Bolsover Hospital was completed in 1988, but closed in spring 2019. The town sought
city status in the
Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours, but the bid was unsuccessful.
Railways Two
railway lines once served the town, but both were early casualties of closure programmes: • The
Midland Railway (later part of the
London, Midland & Scottish Railway), arrived first with their north–south running
Doe Lea branch line from to , opened in September 1890 and thus enabled a through service between and to be operated. served the town on this line. Services were withdrawn in September 1930. • The other line was the highly ambitious west–east running
Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, later part of the
Great Central Railway and subsequently the
London & North Eastern Railway. Only the middle section from Chesterfield to was ever built, opening in March 1897. served the town on this line. The section between Chesterfield and was brought to a premature demise in December 1951 by the deteriorating state of its biggest engineering feature, the
Bolsover Tunnel, which ran beneath the limestone ridge on which stands the castle. The tunnel was mostly filled in with colliery waste in 1966–67 and both ends were sealed off. Today, both portals are visible; the eastern portal at the end of an unusually deep sheer-sided cutting in the village of
Scarcliffe and the western portal just to the south east side of Bolsover. ==Economy==