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Derbyshire Towns & Parishes

DRONFIELD, Derbyshire

"DRONFIELD, once a market-town, in the parish of its name, in the hundred of Scarsdale, is 156 miles from London, 38 S.E. from Manchester, 23 E. by N. from Buxton. 6 N. from Chesterfield, and the like distances from Sheffield. The town is pleasantly situate in a valley, and remarkable for its salubrity, which has occasioned it to become a place of residence for many respectable inhabitants. Edge-tools, scythes, sickles, and other agricultural implements, together with nails, are manufactured here and in the neighbourhood, to a very considerable extent; there are also iron and chymical works, and several corn mills in the vicinity." [There is further information for Dronfield]

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

Cemeteries

• Some Memorial Inscriptions in St John the Baptist's Churchyard, Dronfield. By no means a complete transcript of all MIs in the Churchyard, but it does include contributions from several researchers.

Church Records

• For Information only - the "Parish Chest" for Dronfield (including part of Little Barlow) contains no Settlement Certificates or anything else of great use to us as Family Historians. My grateful thanks to Janet Kirk for this information.

Description and Travel

• Dronfield in Derbyshire - Community, Sport and Leisure (no genealogical content); link included for the purpose of recording its existence only.

Directories

• A Description of Dronfield has been transcribed by Heather Faulkes from Pigot's Directory of 1828-9.

• A Description of Dronfield and Directory for Dronfield, with the villages of Beauchieff, Norton, Holmesfield, Dore, Totley, Unstone and neighbourhoods Beauchieff Abbey transcribed from Pigot and Co's Commercial Directory for Derbyshire, 1835 by Rosemary Lockie.

Gazetteers

• The transcription of the section for Dronfield from the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson.

Schools

• The following information is a quotation from A History of Derbyshire, Gladwyn Turbutt, 1999)

"After Derby and Chesterfield the next reference suggesting the instance of a school comes from Dronfield. Here, between 1496 and 1501, a Dronfield schoolmaster named Christopher Haslam entered into an agreement with Beauchief Abbey to teach the boys and novices singing and grammar. He rented from the Abbey a house in Dronfield, and he appears to have been one of of the priests attached to the Gild of Our Lady. After the dissolution of the chantries and gilds in 1548 Haslam was awarded a pension of £4, but he died shortly afterwards and was buried at Dronfield on 5 October 1551. His will (16 March 1551) mentions his nephew Christopher, who was a chantry priest at Shirland and who died as vicar of Dronfield in 1571. The pre-Reformation Dronfield school may well have been attached to the Gild of Our Lady. In this it would have been in a similar position to the school at Melbourne, founded in 1513-14, which was attached to the chantry of St Katherine and therefore came to an end in 1548."

The successor of this pre-Reformation school - Dronfield grammar school - was founded in 1579 under the terms of the will of Henry Fanshawe.

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