Located close to Nottinghamshire's borders with South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, it is on the River Ryton and not far from the northern edge of Sherwood Forest.

The manor then passed to William de Lovetot, who established a castle and endowed the Augustinian priory around 1103.

After William's death, the manor was passed to his eldest son, Richard de Lovetot, who was visited by King Stephen, at Worksop, in 1161.

(Cavendish's Life of Wolsey) A surviving (Cotton) manuscript written by Henry VIII nominated Worksop as one of three places in Nottinghamshire (along with Welbeck and Thurgarton) to become "Byshopprykys to be new made", but nothing was to come of this (White 1875), and the priory later became a victim of the dissolution of the monasteries – being closed in 1539, with its prior and 15 monks pensioned off.

In 1540, John Leland noted that Worksop castle had all but disappeared, saying it was: "clene down and scant knowen wher it was".

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Worksop benefitted from the building of the Chesterfield Canal, which passed through the town in 1777, and the subsequent construction of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1849.

The A57 Worksop bypass was opened on Thursday 1 May 1986, by Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Michael Spicer and the Chairman of Bassetlaw council.

[9] Stagecoach East Midlands operates bus services in and around the town, with destinations including Doncaster, Rotherham, Chesterfield and Nottingham.

Unemployment levels in the area are now lower than the national average, owing to large number of distribution and local manufacturing companies, including Premier Foods, RDS Transport, Pandrol UK Ltd, and Laing O'Rourke.

Major employers in the area include Premier Foods (Worksop Factory), Greencore, RDS Transport (the Flying Fridge), B&Q, MAKE polymers,[15] OCG Cacao, part of Cargill, Pandrol, GCHQ, and the National Health Service (Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Trust).

John Harrison's survey of Worksop for the Earl of Arundel reveals that at that time, most people earned their living from the land.

A tenant farmer, Henry Cole, farmed 200 acres of land, grazing his sheep on "Manton sheepwalk".

John Speed noted: "In the west, near Worksop, groweth plenty of Liquorice, very delicious and good".

White says the liquorice gardens were "principally situated on the eastern margin of the park, near the present 'Slack Walk'."

Timber firms in the town included Benjamin Garside's woodyard and Godley and Goulding, situated between Eastgate and the railway.

[18] At the start of the 19th century, Worksop had a largely agricultural economy with malting, corn milling, and timber working being principal industries.

Steetley Colliery started producing coal in 1876, and in Worksop a mine was developed on land to the south-east, owned by Henry Pelham-Clinton, 7th Duke of Newcastle.

The closure in the 1990s of the pits, compounding the earlier decline of the timber trade and other local industry, resulted in high unemployment in parts of the Worksop area, as well as other social problems.

Late attempts during the Industrial Revolution to introduce textile manufacturing saw two mills constructed, one at Bridge Place and the other somewhere near Mansfield Road.

Monks at the priory made the Tickhill Psalter, an illuminated manuscript of the medieval period, now held in New York Public Library.

The eastern parts of the building have been restored in several phases, the most recent being in the 1970s when architect Lawrence King rebuilt the crossing.

[27] Worksop Town Hall was originally established as a corn exchange, designed by Isaac Charles Gilbert, which opened in 1851.