SHELDON, Derbyshire

Census

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

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Church History

• The Anglican parish church is dedicated to Saint Michael and All Angels.
  
  
• Some sources give the dedication as just "All Angels" and many sources refer to the church as just a chapel.
  
  
• The present church was built in 1865 near the site of the old chapel.
  
  
• The church burial ground is just a little east of the church.
  
  
• The church seats 140.
  

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Church Records

• The earliest baptism in the Sheldon parish register is 29 Aug 1737, of Cornelius and Richard, sons of Cornelius & Elizabeth WHITE, followed by the first baptism proper, in 1746. In addition to a transcription on CD, available from Ancestral Archives, there is a printed transcription of Sheldon registers available, covering the periods 1672-75 and 1745-1810 for baptisms, and 1745-1812 for marriages, which has the following note:

  "The Register Commenced in the year 1745 when the Queen's Bounty & Mrs Archer's Augmentation made Sheldon a private Curacy when John SWIFT B.A. was first Curate there."

  I recorded the above note from a transcription which I saw some years ago in the Society of Genealogist's Library, obtaining the reference [Ref: DB/R 29 pub. 1939] and covering dates from SoG's website more recently. It is not clear to me now where the baptisms recorded as taking place 1672-75 came from. Added 12 Mar 2008.<
  
  
• Check the registers at Bakewell for earlier entries.
  
  
• The church was in the rural deanery of Bakewell.
  
  
• The Primitive Methodists build a small chapel here in 1848.

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Civil Registration

• Civil Registration began in July, 1837.
  
  
• The parish was in the Bakewell sub-district of the Bakewell Registration District.
  

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Description and Travel

"SHELDON, a chapelry in the parish of Bakewell, hundred of High Peak, county Derby, 3 miles W. of Bakewell, its post town. The village, which is of small extent, is situated near the river Wye, and is chiefly agricultural. A portion of the inhabitants are engaged in the lead mines. The impropriate tithes belong to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield, and to the Duke of Devonshire."

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

The parish covers 1,070 acres.

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Directories

• Ann Andrews provides a transcription of the Sheldon entry from Kelly's Directory of the Counties of Derby, Notts, Leicester and Rutland (1891).

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Folklore

• The Sheldon Duck - in 1610, so legend has it, a group of Sheldon villagers watched a duck fly into an ash tree. They were baffled however, as they never saw the duck come out again. Thereafter, the tree became known as 'The Duck Tree'. Nearly 3 centuries later, when the tree was felled and split up into planks in a timber yard in Ashford, the image of a 'duck-sized' pattern was found in the grain of the two middle planks, with markings where the brain and lungs would have been. Thus was born the legend of 'The Sheldon Duck'. The two boards were on display in Ashford Post Office for a while, and postcards showing an image of the duck used to be sold. However, this was not to last, as the timber merchant who felled the tree liked the pieces of wood so much that he used them for making a mantlepiece at his home.
  [Reference: Bunting, Julie - Branching Out into Fact & Fiction. Article published in The Peak Advertiser 5th April 2004, p1.& p9]

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Gazetteers

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

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History

• Transcription of section of Lysons' Topographical and Historical Account of Derbyshire, 1817, for Sheldon by Barbarann Ayars.

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Politics and Government

• This place was an ancient Chapelry and township in Bakewell parish in Derbyshire and became a modern Civil Parish around 1858.
  
  
• This parish was in the ancient High Peak Hundred (or Wapentake).

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Poorhouses, Poor Law, etc.

• As a result of the 1834 Poorlaw Amendment Act this parish became part of the Bakewell Poolaw Union.
  

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