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A market centre since the 13th century, Pleasley has grey-brown stone cottages with colourful red-tiled roofs, but its colliery has partly turned it into a workaday village.
The little River Meden separates it from Nottinghamshire, winding through the deep Pleasley Vale to the cotton mills downstream. Its old houses and church are on the hillside, and at the crossroads are the steps of a mediaeval cross.
The church is a long and aisleless building with 13th century walls and some lancets among the windows, all deeply splayed. The east window and two similar ones in the nave are of the early 14th century. The embattled tower is a century younger, the iron clamps on the pinnacles reminding us of an earthquake which shook them after Waterloo.
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