Risley

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RISLEY - Description from Pigot's 1835 Directory

RISLEY is a small village and township, partly in the parish of Sawley, and partly in that of Sandiacre, in the same hundred as Ilkeston, about four miles, south, from that town, one and a half, north, from Breason, and about seven and a half, east, from Derby. This manor was formerly held by Sir Hugh Willoughby, the celebrated navigator, who sailed on the 10th of May, 1555, with three ships, in search of a north-east passage, and was frozen to death, with all his crew, in the January following, in the Frozen Ocean.

In Thomson's Seasons this melancholy event is thus most feelingly and emphatically described:

"     ------------ Miserable they!
Who here entangled in the gathering ice,
Take their last look of the descending sun!
While, full of Death, and fierce with tenfold frost,
The long, long night, incumbent o'er their head,
Falls horrible. Such was the Briton's fate;
As with first prow, &c."

The free-school here was erected by Mrs. Elizabeth Gray in 1718, but the principal endowment originated from Mrs. Catherine Wilson at all earlier date.

The township contained, in 1831, 252 inhabitants, being only an increase of twenty-seven persons in 30 years.

[Description from Pigot and Co's Commercial Directory for Derbyshire, 1835
Transcribed by Rosemary Lockie ©1999]

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