Newton is situated about 8 miles south east of Chesterfield, close to the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire border. There is little recorded for Newton until the 16th century, but it had been a coal mining area for many centuries. One of the former mine owners was a Ralph Richardson, of Newton Old Hall.
In one of the five cottages that existed in the 1700's, about where the old folk's
bungalows are now in Main Street, lived Jedediah Strutt
in 1754, who invented the 'Derby Rib' machine and built the first Belper cotton mills.
An old building adjoining the Hall was used as an inn. This was rebuilt
in 1916 as a station hotel, it being accepted at the time that the LNER
railway which was to be brought from Nottingham to Sheffield would
provide a station at the railway bridge in Alfreton Road. The station was
in fact eventually built at Tibshelf. The George and Dragon then became
a white elephant until about 1920, when a cinema which had been built
in Hall Lane started to have variety shows and drama sketches. The
artists who were travellers stayed at the hotel.
A colliery sunk at Tibshelf in about 1880 and known as 'Bottom Pit'
brought a considerable expansion in the Newton development. Houses
were built in Bamford Street and New Street and Sherwood Street to
house the influx of miners. In addition there was a brick works and coke
ovens.
The closing of the local collieries in the 1930s brought some decline to
Newton. Opening of industrial sites in adjoining areas has assisted and
during the 1950s expansion of new buildings with an estate of council
houses and in 1970s with a private estate, has almost doubled the
Newton population.
The LNER railway and Newton station was closed under the Beeching
axe but the Newton-Sutton line was retained as a single mineral line.
