Rhodesia is a small village in the county of Nottinghamshire which is in central England. The English village of Rhodesia shares its name with the country in Southern Africa that was founded by Cecil Rhodes who was a British entrepreneur and politician who was active on southern Africa during the late nineteenth century. The African country has now been reconfigured, split up and renamed Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The English village of Rhodesia is around twenty miles from the city of Sheffield. Many English villages have a history that goes back to the Middle Ages and beyond, and a lot of these are mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 which was a survey of land and property of England created for William the Conqueror, who was the King of England at the time. But the village of Rhodesia was established relatively recently, in the year 1920. The village was created to provide a home for the miners working at nearby coal mines, where rich seams of coal had been discovered. These nearby coal mines were the miners worked were the Shireoaks and Steetly Pits.

In fact Rhodesia was named after the chairman of the coal mining company that owned and operated the coal mines. The chairman of the mining company was called Mr G Preston Rhodes, who was the chairman of the colliery for many years. So Rhodesia was a specially created village with a specially created name. Indeed even the high street, Tylden Road, was named after the first manager of the Shireoaks Pit.

When it was established, the village of Rhodesia had houses only for the miners and their families, and there were no shops. The purpose built houses were pre-fabricated and finished externally with pebble dash. Everything that people needed was delivered by horse and cart to the door of each house. So provisions like meat, fish, vegetables, milk and ice cream where all bought from a travelling merchant. Once a week the residents of the village of Rhodesia would walk along the towpath of the Chesterfield Canal to Shireoaks where they would shop at the Co-op in the town. Then they would walk home with their shopping.

The Chesterfield Canal runs beside the village of Rhodesia. The canal is known locally as the 'Cukoo Dyke' and was opened in the year 1777 to transport materials by barge. In the eighteenth century barges sailing on a network of canals were used to transport all kinds of materials around England. Indeed the stone that was used to build the Houses of Parliament, more properly known as the Palace of Westminster, would have passed by the village of Rhodesia, when it was being transported by barge from Rotherham in Yorkshire to London.

Today the village of Rhodesia is mainly made up of houses as it has been since it was first built in the year 1920. There around 300 residential properties there now, along with a couple of shops, a chapel, a public house, and a village hall. The A57 road runs beside the village, along with the Chesterfield Canal.