Calverton councillor Charles Collyer (1877–1953) was shocked at the price and pointed out that the average rent in the village was only 2s 6d (12½p) per week. It is not known how many houses were built, but the population increased from 272 households in 1921 to 305 households in 1931, so perhaps less than thirty houses in the decade. Plans for a railway, to improve transport in the agricultural districts of Nottinghamshire, which would join Lowdham to a point near Blidworth, and which would serve Epperstone, Woodborough, Calverton and Oxton were proposed in 1919 by the Notts. War Agriculture Committee. Possibly because there was already a line from Rolleston to Mansfield, via Southwell, the plans came to naught. The 1930s brought significant change to the village. Electric light arrived in 1930, with the erection of just a dozen street lights in October of that year. The supplier may have been the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Company. By 1939 however the number of overhead electric cables was considered 'a menace', and requests were made that new ones should be routed underground. In August 1932, Nottingham Corporation's water engineer expressed disappointment that so few applications for mains water were being received from villages, because they appeared satisfied with their existing 'unwholesome' borehole supplies. In Calverton, where pipe-laying was nearly complete, only 125 had signed up for mains water, out of 308 houses. In July 1935, at a time when outdoor swimming was becoming nationally popular and lidos were being built by local councils, the Spring Water Lido, a 75 feet by 30 feet outdoor pool, was opened on Moor Lane as a private enterprise by two village business men, Messrs. P. Bagguley and A. Roden. Equipped with a diving board, changing facilities and a café, the lido was fed by a natural spring delivering 300 gallons a minute. A Lido Social Club was formed in 1947 which, by 1950, had 1,100 members. In June 1937 a new cricket pavilion was opened by James Seely (1901–1956) in the same week (as he noted), that he had attended the ceremony of ground-breaking in connection with the new colliery ("q.v."). The cricket ground itself had been provided by his grandfather Sir Charles Seely in 1910. Although it was in 1937 that the first shaft of the mine was sunk, it had been as early as 1910 that borings had taken place at Oxton, Thurgarton and elsewhere, to more accurately determine the extent of the concealed Nottinghamshire coalfield.