Prior to the sinking the shafts of Warsop Main Colliery, around 1896, Staveley Coal & Iron Company built, using local limestone, a terrace of cottages known as the Rock Cottages, to house the engineers who sunk the shafts and developed the mine.

Although the colliery came into production in1898 no housing for its workers was available until 1900 when the Warsop Almanac said that “Warsop Vale” a new village near Warsop Main Colliery was taking shape with 160 house built and occupied.

These houses were built by a firm from the Staveley area called Moore’s built the houses in the village proper at a cost £40 per house, hence the title of the £40 house.

The village houses were built in blocks, eight, ten or twelve houses to a block. Multiple blocks were formed into multiple rows on three sides of a square with the Colliery forming the fourth. Each house consisted of two rooms downstairs, plus a large pantry, three bedrooms upstairs and was typical of the type built for the workers of that day.

In addition to the houses, the Company built a school, which was opened in 1901, and a Public House, “The Vale Hotel”.

The company was also a very strong advocate of fostering social activities among its workforce and in its heyday this small community of 220 houses boasted of, a School, a Co-operative Society, a Church, a Church Institute, a Methodist Chapel, a Cricket Ground, a Football Ground, a Bowling Green, Tennis Courts and most of all a Community spirit second to none.

Sadly, following the closure of the colliery, Warsop Vale became a shadow of its former self with high unemployment, few facilities and many boarded up houses where once there was a waiting list of people wanting to live in them.