Toponymy

Staythorpe was listed in the Domesday Book in 1086, it was then called Startorp, meaning 'Stari 's village,'.^[3][4]

Heritage

Staythorpe recorded twelve villagers at the time of the Domesday Survey,^[5] the core settlement was for centuries based around Pingley Lane, which branched off the Nottingham-Newark route. In medieval times it belonged to the monastery of Newstead, but when King Henry VIII renounced the Catholic Church and dissolved the monasteries, he gave the land to Trinity College, Cambridge.^[6] For centuries it was a township in Averham parish.^[7] During WWII, an aircraft crashed east of the village.^[8][9] In 1946 a large area of riverside land was sold to the Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Electric Power Company, the building of Staythorpe Power Station was begun and the first turbine unit was put into service in March 1950. Thirteen cottages were built for the managers and chemists of the new plant in 1947, which greatly increased the size of the village.^[10]

The housing development was commissioned by its successor British Electricity Authority, the initials (BEA) phonetically forming the name of the estate Behay Gardens. The cottages were designed by local architect Thomas Cecil Howitt, OBE, who was a British provincial architect of the 20th century and is chiefly remembered for designing prominent public buildings, such as the Council House and Processional Way in Nottingham.^[10] A larger power station, Staythorpe B was built alongside the first, construction commenced in 1956 and was officially opened in May 1962. The first or 'A' station was decommissioned in 1983 and demolition was started in 1986 and finished in 1988. Staythorpe B closed in 1994. Staythorpe C opened in 2010.^[11] The Hughs Close estate was built in the middle 1990s,^[12] and was the only new development in the parish after Behay Gardens, which has since been sold off to the general public.^[13]