Thurnscoe

Thurnscoe is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. The village falls within the Dearne North ward of the Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, and along with Goldthorpe and Bolton upon Dearne is part of the Dearne Towns. Historically within the West Riding of Yorkshire, the village is approximately from Barnsley and from Doncaster. It is served by Thurnscoe railway station with bus links provided by Stagecoach. In 2011, it had a population of 8,687.

== History == Set in the heart of the Dearne Valley, historically, Thurnscoe was a farming village and in Roman times it was situated on the Roman road Ryknild Street, which ran down a track, (known locally as "the cow track" as it was the route for the dairy herds until the farm closed in recent years), to the east of what is now Rectory Lane. It continues up Southfield Lane by the side of the cemetery and over fields to the south of the village, and up Clayton Lane to the north. Thurnscoe was known in early times as Turnesc, this becoming Terunsc by the time of its mention in the Domesday Book, with the name Thurnscoe is derived from Old Norse for Thorn Tree Wood. Parts of the village were owned by Roche Abbey, who dug Magnesian Limestone in an area known locally as "Cave Wood" which is a craggy geography between the overlying Cadeby Formation and underlying Yellow Sands Formation, both late Permian. Cadeby limestone from Thurnscoe was a moderately significant export in medieval times.