Place:Great Longstone, Derbyshire, England

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

Great Longstone with Little Longstone is one of two villages and civil parishes in the local government district of Derbyshire Dales in Derbyshire, England. The population (including the small parishes of Hassop and Rowland, but not Little Longstone) as taken at the 2011 Census was 843.

History

A place called "Longsdune" was mentioned in the Domesday Book as belonging to Henry de Ferrers and being worth thirty shillings; this is considered to be Great Longstone. (Longstone was a chapelry of the ancient parish of Bakewell and it and Great Longstone are assumed to be synonomous.)

The church of St Giles in Great Longstone dates from the 13th century. A medieval cross stands in the churchyard, and the head of a cross is built into the wall of the vestry.

The manor house, Longstone Hall, has its origins in the following century, but was rebuilt in the mid-18th century. That century was one of prosperity, with lead-mining and shoemaking.

The manors of Great and Little Longstone passed through many hands over the years. Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, was Lord of the Manor on his death in 1474, when the lordship passed to Robert Shakerley[5] and his wife Margaret, daughter and heiress of Roger Levett. The two families' coats of arms adorn the church of St Giles. In subsequent years, Shakerley descendants sold the manor to Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (also known as Bess of Hardwick.

Little Longstone, further west, has a 17th-century manor house and still has its village stocks.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Great Longstone.

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).

"LONGSTONE (GREAT), a village, a township, and a chapelry in Bakewell parish, Derby. The village stands on high ground, under a lofty range of hills, called Longstone Edge, near the Derby and Buxton railway, 3 miles NW by N of Bakewell; consists of one long street; and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Bakewell.

"The township bears the name of Great Longstone-with-Holme. Real property: £5,292; of which £990 are in quarries. Population in 1851: 564; in 1861: 683. Houses: 130. The increase of population arose from the temporary presence of labourers at the forming of the railway. The manor and much of the land belong to the Duke of Devonshire. Longstone Hall, an ancient mansion at the W end of the village, is the seat of T. Gregory, Esq. Holme Hall is the residence of T. J. Gisborne, Esq.

"The chapelry includes also Little Longstone township, and part of Wardlow. Population: 925. Houses: 173. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Lichfield. Value: £190. Patron: the Vicar of Bakewell. The church is old; comprises nave and chancel, with a small tower; and contains monuments of the noble family of Eyre. There are two dissenting chapels, respectively in Great Longstone and Little Longstone; and there is a commodious school, built in 1862, and endowed with £25 a year."

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.