CHAPEL en le FRITH, Derbyshire

Bibliography

• Smith, Mike - The Book of Chapel en le Frith : A Community History of the Parish. Halsgrove, 2003.
  ISBN 1-84114-234-4
  
  
• A companion volume to The Book of Bakewell Show and The Book of Edale, for which Reviews are available.

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Census

• The parish was in the Chapel en le Frith sub-district of the Chapel en le Frith Registration District.
  
  
• The table below gives census piece numbers, where known:
  
  

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Church History

• The first chapel in the town was originally built by the Normans, but was replaced with a larger church only 100 years later.
  
  
• Buried in the churchyard are soldiers of the Scottish army of the Duke of Hamilton who marched south in support of Charles I in 1648. After their defeat at Preston, they were marched to Chapel and imprisoned in the church for sixteen days in such squalid conditions that forty died; a further ten died when they were marched towards Cheshire.
  
  
• The Anglican parish church is dedicated to Saint Thomas a Becket.
  

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Church Records

• The Anglican parish register dates from 1620 and is in good condition.
  
  
• We have a pop-up window of Parish Register burials in a text file for your review. Your additions are welcomed.
  
  
• The church was in the rural deanery of Buxton.
  

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Civil Registration

• Civil Registration began in July, 1837.
  
  
• The parish was in the Chapel en le Frith sub-district of the Chapel en le Frith Registration District.
  

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Description and Travel

"CHAPEL-EN-LE-FRITH is a market-town and parish, in the hundred of High Peak, 167 miles from London, 20 S.E. from Manchester, 21 N.W. from Sheffield, 23 W. by N. from Chesterfield, and 6 N. from Buxton. Its name signifies the 'Chapel-in-the-Forest; from the Saxon word frith, a forest or wood - the church or chapel, which originated the town, having been built within the forest of the High Peak. The town is neat and pleasantly situate on the declivity of a hill, rising from an extensive and fertile vale, surrounded by an amphitheatre of lofty eminences that bound this extremity of the county."

[Description from Pigot and Co's Commercial Directory for Derbyshire, 1835]

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Directories

• A Description of Chapel en le Frith has been transcribed by Heather Faulkes from Pigot's Directory of 1828.
  
  
• Ann Andrews provides a transcription of the Chapel en le Frith entry from Kelly's Directory of the Counties of Derby, Notts, Leicester and Rutland (1891).

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Gazetteers

• The transcription of the section for Chapel en le Frith from the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson.

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Politics and Government

• This parish was in the ancient High Peak Hundred (or Wapentake).

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Poorhouses, Poor Law, etc.

• As a result of the Poorlaw Amendment Act reforms of 1834, this parish became the center of the Chapel en le Frith Poorlaw Union.
  
  
• The union workhouse was built c.1840 on the Whaley Bridge road (grid reference SK051805). It consisted of an entrance range and an accommodation block of three wings centred on an octagonal hub, an infirmary and an isolation hospital.
  

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Population

Year	Inhabitants
1881	4,170
1891	4,647

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