Toponymy

The placename was formerly known as Greasley-Moor-Green, and was possibly singularly known as The Moor or The Green interchangeably, prior to the present combined spelling.^[2]

Medieval period

Moorgreen was part of the Greasley Castle estate, and possibly contained the home farm for it, with some probable villein tenements and a few labourers’ abodes, and it therefore was not mentioned separately in Domesday. In present times there is a “Manor House” which possibly was built on the site. The village was likely and invariably named the Moor, and the Green before the two were combined.^[2] In the 14th century at Kimberley Hugh de Cressy and his wife Cecilia, rented properties to the priory of nearby Beauvale, and in default of payment they would be entitled to seize the priory lands (among other places) at the Moorhouses, which probably by then was the name for Moorgreen.^[3]

The first instance of the name Moorgreen is in 1411, within borough records. The entry recorded that the lords of the manor of Greasley had set up a gate at Moorgreen, as a man who is described as “William of the Gate of Moorgreen” was sued at Nottingham for a breach of contract with the people of Cossall. The Moorhouses were therefore held by the de Cantilupe family. and there will have been a few cottars or bordars, in the local lord's employment. The Greasley manor eventually descended to the Earls of Essex, and from them into the Sutton family, eventually being sold to the House of Melbourne, with Sir Matthew Lamb purchasing the Greasley estate from the Sutton family in 1753. Lambclose, south of the reservoir, was at the time a farmhouse, and after some alterations and improvements was used as a hunting lodge. It forms part of the present Lambclose House, which the Barber family built, with Thomas Barber enlarging the house substantially.^[3]

Modern era

In the middle 1600s nonconformists worshipped at Moorgreen in an old barn, with the site later hosting a chapel, with a prior vicar of Greasley, Robert Smalley, helping to establish it in 1662. The building is now a private residence. The area by the turn of the 20th century, was in the ownership mainly of Earl Cowper, with the exception of two farms. The Earl was by this time, the lord of the manor at Greasley.^[4] Moorgreen colliery was some 1 km south of the house, and was opened in 1865, by the Barber Walker company, a shared business by the Barbers and the Walker family of nearby Eastwood Hall. The mine operated for 120 years until 1985.^[5] The Barber family eventually after the death of the Earl, purchased much of the locality, and continue to own land and farm locally, with holdings including the Moorgreen reservoir.^[6]