Coalville - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

COALVILLE, a town in the Loughborough parliamentary division of Leicestershire, England, II m. N.N.W. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901) 15,281. It is served by the Midland railway, and there is also a station (Coalville East) on the Nuneaton-Loughborough branch of the London & NorthWestern railway. This is a town of modern growth, a centre of the coal-mining district of north Leicestershire. There are also iron foundries and brick-works. A mile north of Coalville is Whitwick, with remains of a castle of Norman date, while to the north again are slight remains of the nunnery of Gracedieu, founded in 1240, where, after its dissolution, Francis Beaumont, the poet-colleague of John Fletcher, was born about 1586. In the neighbourhood is the Trappist abbey of Mount St Bernard, founded in 1835, possessing a large domain, with buildings completed from the designs of A. W. Pugin in 1844.