Place:Ashford in the Water, Derbyshire, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Ashford in the Water is a village in the Derbyshire Peak District, on the River Wye. It is known for the quarrying of Ashford Black Marble (a form of limestone), and for the maidens' garlands made to mark the deaths of virgins in the village until 1801. Some of these are preserved in the parish church. The civil parish population (including the small neighbouring parish of Sheldon for which there was less than 100) taken at the 2011 UK census was 559.

Ashford in the Water was originally a chapelry in the ancient parish of Bakewell in the High Peak Hundred of Derbyshire, England. It is now within the local administration of the Derbyshire Dales District.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"ASHFORD, a village, a township, and a chapelry in Bakewell parish, Derby[shire]. The village stands on the river Wye, adjacent to the Buxton railway, in a charming situation, surrounded by high hills near Monsal dale, 1 mile WNW of Hassop [railway] station, and 2 NW of Bakewell.

"It has a post office under Bakewell; and it carries on stocking-making, spinning, and a trade in marble. Mills for the cutting and polishing of marble were erected in its vicinity in 1748, and are the oldest establishments of their kind in England. Marbles of many tints, but chiefly black and grey, are found adjacent, about 40 feet beneath the surface, in nine beds from 3 to 9 inches thick; and are manufactured at the mills into a great variety of ornamental articles.

"Ashford Hall, in the neighbourhood, is the seat of the Cavendish family; and the manor belongs to the Duke of Devonshire. A spot near the church was the site of the mansion of Edward Plantagenet, of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, now traceable only by the moat.

"The township and the chapelry are co-extensive. Real property: £5,195. Population: 829. Houses: 172. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Lichfield. Value: £102. Patron: the Vicar of Bakewell. The church is ancient. There are chapels for Methodists and Unitarians, free schools for boys and girls, and charities £20.

Research Tips

• Derbyshire Record Office website
• British History Online (Victoria County Histories) does not appear to cover Derbyshire geographically. A History of the County of Derby: Volume 2, edited by William Page is a part-volume covering the religious houses of the county. No further volumes have been found.
• GENUKI main page for Derbyshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Derbyshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
• For a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from the following selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile. Sections of the 1900 map showing parish boundaries only have been reproduced on some (but not all) parish pages here in WeRelate.

• Map of Derbyshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown.
• Map of Derbyshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were some changes in urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.
• Ordnance Survey map of Derbyshire for 1967 This is the last in this series and was made while Derbyshire was experimenting with the non-metropolitan district structure adopted in 1974. It is a much cleaner map for reading the names of the civil parishes, but the smaller villages are no longer visible.

These are only three of the series of maps to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time.

• Wikimedia Commons map of the post-1974 districts of Derbyshire. The numbers will be linked to the districts on the WeRelate district pages.
• Wikimedia Commons often provides a map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds", but there does not appear to be one for Derbyshire. This 1832 Ordnance Survey map from A Vision of Britain through Time is not as good as those in the Wikimedia Commons series.
• Derbyshire family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
• Towns and Villages of Derbyshire and the Peak District is a locally produced website designed for tourists.