Sherwood Lodge

The present-day Headquarters of Nottinghamshire Police stands on the site of the original Sherwood Lodge Mansion and private church. Those splendid buildings, pictured below, are long gone. Towards the end of its day the house was aquired by the regional office of the National Coal Board who later sold it to the Nottinghamshire Police Authority as a site for the police headquarters. By this time the house had fallen into a bad state and together with the church was doomed to be demolished.

Much of the old coal board buildings were wooden-hut type structures which passed on to the Nottinghamshire Police and remained up until only recently.

Before Sherwood Lodge was the local NCB Headquarters it's owner was Colonel Frank Seely. When Colonel Seely came to Sherwood Lodge, there was nothing worthy the name of an estate attached to it. The house was built about a century prior to his occupation and previously had some four or five tenants. Colonel Samuel Coape, who was heir to Mrs. Sherbrooke, of Oxton, once resided there, and before Mr. Seely purchased the property, it was the residence of the Rev. George Francis Holcombe, who was Vicar of Arnold and county magistrate. The two most important rooms in the house were the drawing room and library, both of which were added by Colonel Seely. Those new rooms were very fine, and furnished with perfect taste. The library was entered through handsome doors of unpolished oak; the mantelpiece was of oak richly carved, the beautiful woodwork being carried throughout the whole room, even to the organ, which was installed in the house.

The estate also had its own church which the Seely family used on Sundays for the purposes of worship. The nearest church was some considerable distance from the house so services were conducted there by a clergyman of the Established Church.

During his last few years Colonel Seely made large purchases of land in the neighbourhood of Sherwood Lodge and had a considerable stake in the county, in addition to his interest in the family estates in Derbyshire, Surrey, and the Isle of Wight. He was the owner of some 3,000 acres of land in Nottinghamshire and had the reputation of laying his hands upon as much land as he could in the neighbourhood of his residence. One of his purchases was an estate at Haywood Oaks, not far from Blidworth, which included a substantial house, some 600 acres of land, and some fifty or sixty grand oak trees.

In 1975 work started on the new Force Headquarters after the old Sherwood Lodge and church had been demolished. At that stage it was envisaged that the new building would still not be large enough to accomodate all the departments and so many of the wooden huts were retained and were demolished only recently.