Calverton () is a village and civil parish in Nottinghamshire, England and of some in size. It is in the Gedling district, about north-east of Nottingham, south-east of Mansfield, and situated, like nearby Woodborough and Lambley, on one of the small tributaries of the Dover Beck. The 2021 census found 7,282 inhabitants in 3,120 households. About miles to the north of the village is the site of the supposed deserted settlement of Salterford.
The parish is bounded on the south-east by Woodborough, to the south-west by Arnold, Papplewick and Ravenshead, to the north by Blidworth, and to the north-east by Oxton and Epperstone.Calverton ecclesiastical parish map; The Civil Parish is larger and includes part of Daybrook ecclesiastical parish, either side of Gravelly Hollow.
During most of its existence Calverton was a forest village, in that part of Sherwood known as Thorney Wood Chase, with a rural economy limited by a lack of grazing land, in which handicrafts (like woodworking and the knitting of stockings), must in consequence have assumed a more than usual importance.J. Thirsk, (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol.IV, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 97; J. R. Birrell, "Peasant Craftsmen in the Medieval Forest", Agricultural History Review, 17 (1969), passim. The parliamentary enclosure of 1780 brought some agrarian progress to the village, but it was not until the opening of a colliery by the National Coal Board in 1952, that the village began to assume its present identity, with new housing estates and marked population growth. The colliery closed in 1999 and while a small industrial estate provides some local employment, Calverton has taken on the character of a large commuter village.
In May 1974 the village was officially twinned with Longué-Jumelles, in the Loire valley of France.
History
Toponymy The place appears as Calvretone in the Domesday survey of 1086 and as Kalvirton in the Rotuli Hundredorum of 1275. Scholars believe that the name means "the farm of the calves", from Old English calf (genitive plural "calfra" + tūn.J. E. B. Gover; A. Mawer & F. Stenton, Place-Names of Nottinghamshire (Cambridge, 1940), p. 158A. D. Mills, Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names (Oxford, 2003)H. Mutschmann, The Place-Names of Nottinghamshire: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, 1913), p. 29E. Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (Oxford, 1960) p. 83V. Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-names, (Cambridge, 2004), p. 111 Calverton is one of a number of settlements in the area (with Oxton, Bulcote and Lambley), which contain animal place name elements; this has led to speculation that there was some undiscovered ancient functional connection between the places.A. Mawer, "Animal and Personal Names in O.E. Place-Names" in The Modern Language Review Vol. 14, No. 3 (1919), pp. 233-244, (passim)
Salterford (q.v.) was Saltreford in 1086 and probably means "ford of the salters", where salter refers to a salt–dealer or carrier, rather than a maker of the commodity.E. B. Gover; A. Mawer & F. Stenton, Place-Names of Nottinghamshire (Cambridge, 1940), p. 158 Although the place was situated in the forest, the road to York, or King's Highway (the precursor of the A614) passed close by, and this may well have been frequented by salt-carriers.H. Mutschmann, The Place-Names of Nottinghamshire: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, 1913), p. 116 An alternative explanation that it is derived from a ford near to a saltery, or deer-leap, (Latin saltatorium) on the boundary of the royal hunting ground of Sherwood Forest, and had nothing to do with salt is, perhaps, less likely.M. C. Higham, "Take it with a pinch of Salt" in Landscape History, vol 25 (2003), pp. 59–65; E. P. Shirley, Some account of English deer parks: with notes on the management of deer (1867), p. 14
Bonner Hill, Bonner Lane and Burnor Pool may each contain the Old Norse word brunnr, a spring + Old English haugr, a hill.J. Gover et al., p. 180 Alternatively the first element may be the Old English burna, meaning a spring or stream.K. Cameron, English Place Names (1961), p. 162
Roman Calverton There are traces of two Roman marching camps in a field north-east of the Oxton Road and Whinbush Lane crossroads on the west side of the valley of the Dover Beck ().These were identified from aerial photographs, there being no above ground evidence in the form of earthworks. The site of the camps is a protected Scheduled Monument. A smaller one of four acres is set wholly within the defences of a larger, perhaps earlier, one of about twenty-six acres. Marching camps traces are thought to be the remains of the entrenchments made by an army unit for an overnight stop, where there was the chance of an attack. The dimensions of the camp are dictated by the size of the army unit. The transitory nature of these camps suggests that there are unlikely to be substantial archaeological features, other than the identified entrenchment traces.D. N. Riley, "Temporary Camps at Calverton, Notts", Britannia, vol. 14 (1983), p. 270; S. Malone & D. Garton, "Calverton Roman Camps" Archaeology in Nottinghamshire 1999, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 104 (2000)
A lead figurine was found at "a hill-top site" in Calverton. It is of a naked seated female personage with long hair, topped by a plain round head-dress. It may depict a fertility goddess, perhaps a local version of Venus.J. M. C. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans (1964), p. 356; M. Todd, The Coritani (1991), p. 114
According to the Victoria County History, nearly two hundred denarii, chiefly of Trajan and Hadrian (A.D. 98–138), were supposedly found, in the eighteenth century, in a broken pot somewhere in the parish.W. Page (ed.), The Victoria history of the county of Nottingham, vol 2 (1906), p. 24 This may well, however, be a duplicate report of a find, in 1765, of a vessel full of Roman coins dug up at 'Robin Hood's Pot' close to the junction of Haywood Oaks and the A614.T. Bailey, Annals of Nottinghamshire, 4 vols. (1852–55), vol. 3, p. 1277; The Archaeological Journal, vol 43, (1886), p. 39; 'Robin Hood's Pot' is not to be confused with 'Robin Hood's Hill' in neighbouring Oxton parish. More recently, two very similar coin hoards were unearthed at sites less than three hundred yards apart. The first in June 1959, during work on the foundations of Manor Park Infants' School, Collyer Road, and the second during the building of a house in Crookdole Lane in about April 1960. No structural remains were detected with either hoard and the only associated archaeological material was the earthenware pot in which the first hoard was concealed.H B. Mattingly, "Two hoards of Roman coins from Calverton", Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 64 (1960), pp. 9–19 While most Roman coin hoards are believed to have been buried for safe-keeping, with the intention of being eventually recovered, it is possible that hoards may instead sometimes represent communal votive offerings to the gods.R. Bland, A. Chadwick, C. Haselgrove, D. Mattingly,Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards in Britain (2020), p.188
Domesday survey The Domesday survey indicates that the Calverton of 1086 was held by three parties: the Archbishop of York had one part, as a berewick (or outlying estate) of his manor at Blidworth, with a church and priest, and the other two parts were held by Roger of Poitou and the thegn Aelfric of Colwick.J. Morris (ed.), Domesday Book, vol. 28: Nottinghamshire (Chichester, 1977), pp. 5,16,30 The church is one of only eighty-five mentioned amongst some four hundred places names listed in Nottinghamshire and it is perhaps possible that its existence, at that early time, was due to it being situated on land that was part of an archiepiscopal estate.
Two freeman (sochemannus), thirteen villagers (villanus), two smallholders (bordarius) and a priest are mentioned and, assuming that these were the heads of eighteen households, the population of Calverton in 1086 was perhaps around seventy persons.N. Goose, & A Hinde, 'Estimating local population sizes at fixed points in time. Part II: Specific sources', Local Population Studies 78 (2007) pp. 75–6
Population The Protestation Returns of 1642 were intended to record a full list of all male inhabitants aged eighteen years and over in each parish, who took an oath to "live and die for the true Protestant religion". A population total can be easily calculated by allowing for the estimated proportion of the population under the age of eighteen years, perhaps 40% and doubling to allow for women.vide A. Whiteman, 'The Protestation Returns of 1641–1642: part I, the general organisation', Local Population Studies, 55 (1995), pp. 14–27 Seventy-five names are listed in the Calverton parish returns, with the note "none refused".W. F. Webster (ed.), Protestation Returns, 1641/2 – Notts/Derbys, (West Bridgford, 1980) A population estimate for the village, immediately before the English Civil War, is therefore 250.
The Hearth Tax was introduced, after the Civil War, in 1662 to provide a regular source of income for the newly restored monarch, King Charles II. Sometimes referred to as "chimney money", the tax was essentially a property tax on households (rather than houses) graded according to the number of their fireplaces. The 1664 Hearth tax returns show that Calverton had seventy-nine chargeable hearths in thirty-five households and seventeen not-chargeable hearths in seventeen households which had been exempted from the tax.W F Webster ( ed.), Nottinghamshire hearth tax, 1664:1674, Thoroton Society Record Series, 37, (1988) p. 97 A multiplier, recommended by some authorities, is 4.3, which gives a population for Calverton at the end of the English Civil War, of 223 in the fifty-two households.T. Arkell, "Multiplying factors for estimating population totals from the Hearth Tax", Local Population Studies, 28 (1982), pp. 51–7
Village surnames which span the Civil War period include Cooper, Wilkinson, Martin, Pepper, Mottram and Sturtivant.By inspection and comparison of the Protestation Returns of 1642 and the Hearth Tax returns of 1664
Soon after the Restoration, Calverton lost its vicar, John Allot, for non-conformity. The Act of Uniformity 1662 required the use of all the rites and ceremonies in the Book of Common Prayer in church services. Revd. Allot, a puritan, was one of nearly two thousand clergymen who refused to conform and were removed from office in the Great Ejection from the Church of England for not complying with the Act. He went to London and ministered in private, but died soon afterwards.E. Calamy & S. Palmer, The Nonconformist's Memorial:Being an Account of the Ministers... (1775), p. 280 The Act encouraged the notion of non-conformity and religious dissent in English society.for example: J.E. Bradley Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism: Non-conformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society (2002), p.49