Taken from 'The Derbyshire Village Book' published by the Derbyshire Federation of Women's Institutes & Countryside Books, 1991. ISBN 1 85306 133 6 Earl Sterndale, five miles south of Buxton, lies 1,100 ft above sea level in the Peak National Park. It is ringed by beautiful hills such as Parkhouse Chrome and High Wheeldon. Chrome is recorded as being the highest hill in the county, and High Wheeldon was given to the National Trust as a memorial to the men of Derbyshire and Staffordshire regiments who gave their lives in two World Wars. In the hillside is a cave in which were found prehistoric remains and exhibits are now in the Buxton Museum. The first recorded mention of Earl Sterndale is in 1244, when it was known as Stenredile. This may reflect the nature of the terrain in those days and for many centuries - a stony and sterile dale. Today, it is a pretty upland village. Most of the cottages are built of stone, hand-got from small quarries in the village. The Duke of Devonshire once owned most of the land in the parish and, in the past, lead mining and quarrying provided employment as well as agriculture, although occupations now are diverse. The first chapelry was built in the reign of Edward IV, around 1400. This was a wooden structure and was reputedly burned down. The present church of St Michael was built in 1828 and it has a Saxon font. This font, a treasure of the church, was shattered when the church was virtually destroyed by incendiary bombs on the night of 9th January 1941, the only one in the Derbyshire Diocese to be damaged by enemy action. The font was repaired, the church rebuilt, and rededicated in July 1952. The Wakes, one of the feasts of the church, is now always the Sunday nearest to the l lth October. Tradition has it that the man who is most drunk on the Friday before the Wakes is elected Mayor for the year. The church register begins in 1768, and there is mention in it of a workhouse and asylum, now the walled garden of a private house. The road adjacent, Griffen Lane, is named after the workhouse keeper. Children having previously been educated in the Quiet Woman inn and Sycamore Cottage, the present school was built in 1850 in the grounds of the church. The same year saw the building of the Wesleyan chapel. The only inn still in existence is the Quiet Woman, which is reputed to be over 400 years old and was in the occupation of the Heathcote family for nearly 300 years. This unusual name, one of only three in the country, is said to derive from the too talkative wife of a landlord who was decapitated in consequence! It has the sign of a headless woman and the quotation 'Soft words turneth away wrath'. Earl de Ferrers gave great tracts of land to the Basingwerk Monastery, and Abbots Grove, at the southern end of the village, was built about 1780 on the site of an earlier building in which the abbot stayed when visiting monastery properties. There are many Granges in the village where the monks lived and worked the land, such as Cronkstone, Glutton and Harley, etc. It is said that Bonnie Prince Charlie's men, looking for food, found cattle belonging to Cronkstone hidden up a narrow dale. They killed them and had a great feast - thus giving the name Glutton to the Grange in the dale. During the 1850s,'the buildings at Abbots Grove housed the local tannery and many interesting artefacts have been unearthed there. At the end of the century, one Thomas Bradley, resident there, deserted his wife for another woman. On his death, he bequeathed his wife one shilling. She was so infuriated that she nailed the shilling to the kitchen door and it was still there in 1974, disappearing shortly afterwards during renovations, leaving only the imprint which remains today. Woodbine Cottage was once the home of Billy Budd, who fought in the Afghan War in 1880, and who marched from Kabul to Kandahar a distance of 350 miles, wearing no boots but his feet wrapped in cloths. He is buried in the churchyard.