Repton

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REPTON, Derbyshire - Extract from National Gazetteer, 1868

"REPTON, a parish in the hundred of Repton and Gresley, county Derby, 4¼ miles N.E. of Burton, its post town, and 1 mile E. of the Willington railwaystation. It is situated on a branch of the river Trent, near the Midland railway, and includes the hamlet of Milton and the chapelry of Bretby. In the Saxon times it was a royal seat of the Mercian kings, and was then called Hreopandunum, Reppandene, or Repindon. There are ruins of a nunnery founded prior to 660, and in which Ethelbald I. and other of the Mercian kings were interred.

It was burnt by the Danes in 873, but refounded in 1172 by Matilda, wife of Earl Ranulph, of Chester, as a priory for Black Canons. Its revenue at the Dissolution was valued at £168, and the site was then given to the Thackers. The inhabitants are chiefly engaged in agriculture. The substratum is clay, alternating with gravel. An annual court-leet is held by the lord of the manor. The tithes were commuted for land under an Enclosure Act near the end of the last century.

The living is a perpetual curacy* in the diocese of Lichfield, value £123. The church, dedicated to St. Wyston, has aspire 198 feet in height, and a Norman crypt of great antiquity, believed to have been part of the conventual church destroyed by the Danes. There is also a district church at Bretby, or Bradby, the living of which is a donative curacy, value £80. The parochial charities produce about £3,000 per annum, of which sum £2,569 goes to Etwall hospital and the grammar school, founded in 1556 by Sir J. Port.

In 1621 the master of Etwall hospital, the head-master of Repton school, and the poor men and scholars were incorporated, and the remains of the conventual buildings converted into a school-house. This is the school where Lightfoot, the Hebrew scholar, was usher, and Shaw, the Staffordshire historian, and Scott, the translator of the "Arabian Nights", were pupils. There is a literary institution, under Sir J. H. Crewe, Bart. The Independents and Wesleyans have each a place of worship."

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]

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