SHIRLAND, Derbyshire

Census

• The parish was in the Ashover sub-district of the Chesterfield 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 Leonard.
  
  
• The church was built around the 14th century.
  
  
• The church was restored in 1848.
  
  
• The church seats 200.
  

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Church Records

• The Anglican parish register dates from 1678 for burials and 1695 for all other entries.
  
  
• A CD containing a transcription of The Parish Registers of St Leonard's Church is available for purchase from Valerie Neal. Added 20 Nov 2009.
  
  
• The church was in the rural deanery of Alfreton.
  
  
• The Society of Friends (Quakers) had a meeting house here in Toad Hole before 1857.
  
  
• A Wesleyan Methodist chapel was built here before 1857.
  
  
• A Wesleyan Methodist Reformers chapel was built in Higham in 1852.
  

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Civil Registration

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

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Description and Travel

"SHIRLAND is a parish, in the hundred of Scarsdale, two miles S.W. from Alfreton, containing the hamlet of HIGHAM, which was formerly a market town, but discontinued as such about 1785. Higham is a place of considerable antiquity situate on the Iknield-street of the Romans. The parish church, dedicated to St. Leonard contains several ancient monuments of the De Greys. The parish contained, in 1831, 1,212 inhabitants, and Higham 595 of that number."

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

The parish covers over 2,942 acres and includes the hamlet of Hallfield Gate. The River Amber flows through the parish.

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Directories

• Ann Andrews provides a transcription of the Shirland with Higham 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 Shirland from the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson.

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Politics and Government

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

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Poorhouses, Poor Law, etc.

• As a result of the 1834 Poorlaw Amendment Act reforms, this parish became a member of the Chesterfield Poorlaw Union.
  

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