SHIRLEY, Derbyshire

Census

• The parish was in the Ashbourne sub-district of the Ashbourne 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 (some sources give St. Matthew?).
  
  
• Michael GLOVER provides a photo of Saint Michael's Church on Geo-graph, taken in 2010.
  

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Church Records

• The Anglican parish register dates from 1658 and is in good condition.
  
  
• The London Family History Centre has the parish registers for 1773 through 1981 on microfilm.
  
  
• The church was in the rural deanery of Ashborne.
  
  
• The Wesleyan Methodists had a chapel here built before 1891.
  

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Civil Registration

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

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Description and Travel

"SHIRLEY, with the townships of STYDD and YEAVELEY, forming a parish, in the same hundred as Brailsford, is about 3 miles W. from that village, 9 N.W. from Derby, and 5 S. by E. from Ashbourn. The habitations are so scattered over the parish, that the features of a village are not to be recognised. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is a small building, with a tower of wood. Shirley park, in this parish, occupies up wards of two hundred acres, and at one time was a noted cover for foxes. Part of the old manor house of the Shirleys, who settled here in the reign of Henry II, still exists attached to a farm house. The parish contained, at the last census, 602 inhabitants."

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

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Directories

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

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Military History

• There's a photo of the War Memorial at Traces of War showing it in the churchyard.
  

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Politics and Government

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

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Poorhouses, Poor Law, etc.

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

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