THORPE, Derbyshire

Census

• The parish was in 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 Leonard.
  
  
• The church tower dates from 1150.
  
  
• The church chancel was restored in 1881.
  
  
• The church seats 120.
  

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Church Records

• The Anglican parish register dates from 1538 for baptisms and 1541 for marriages.
  
  
• We have a pop-up window of a parital extract of the Parish Register burials into a text file for your review. Your additions are welcomed.
  
  
• The church was in the rural deanery of Ashbourne.
  

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Civil Registration

• Civil Registration began in July, 1837.
  
  
• The parish was in the Ashbourne Registration District.
  

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Description and Travel

"THORPE is likewise a small parish, in the same hundred as the two before-mentioned villages [Ed: TISSINGTON and (FENNY) BENTLEY], about three miles and a half N.W. from Ashbourn. A little northward of the village, at the entrance of the romantic Dovedale, is a remarkable conical hill, called 'Thorpe Cloud', steeply ascending three hundred feet above the bed of the river Dove, which flows at its base. The church, which is dedicated to St. Leonard, is a neat edifice, situate on the brow of a hill, and so surrounded by trees as to be highly picturesque: the living is a discharged rectory, in the patronage of the Dean of Lincoln. Population, by the census taken in 1821, 203, and by the returns in 1831, the number was 189."

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

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Directories

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

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Politics and Government

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

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Poorhouses, Poor Law, etc.

• With the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act reforms of 1834, this parish became a member of the Ashbourn Poorlaw Union.
  

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