Place:Derby St. Alkmund, Derbyshire, England

Watchers
NameDerby St. Alkmund
Alt namesLittle Chestersource: village within parish
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates52.9268°N 1.4786°W
Located inDerbyshire, England     ( - 1898)
See alsoMorleston and Litchurch Hundred, Derbyshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Derby, Derbyshire, Englandcounty borough into which it was absorbed in 1897

Five of the early churches of Derby were considered ancient parishes. Some had subordinate chapelries located both in and out of the city. These also became civil parishes between 1837 and 1898 when Derby incorporated the three church parishes on becoming a county borough. In order to differentiate between churches of the same name in many cities and towns, the title of the parish starts with the name of the urban area and is followed by the name of the saint to whom the church is dedicated.

Derby St. Alkmund parish covered the northern part of the city of Derby with Mackworth to the west, Darley Abbey to the north and Derby St. Paul on the east. The parish included the village of Little Chester. (Source: English Jurisdictions). The parish was considered a civil parish between (probably) 1837 and (definitely) 1898. As an ancient parish it was also responsible for the townships of Darley Abbey, Quarndon and Little Eaton.

Parish Registers from 1538; Bishops Transcripts from 1662


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Saint Alkmund's Church was a Victorian church, which stood in a Georgian square between Bridgegate and Queen Street in Derby; this was the only Georgian square in the city. The church and its yard were demolished in 1968 for construction of a road to improve traffic flow.

Churches dedicated to Saint Alkmund had been constructed on this site since the 9th century. Artefacts recovered from this site include a stone sarcophagus and remains of a tall stone cross, both now held at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

The building was replaced with a modern church on Kedleston Road, St Alkmund’s (new) Church, Derby.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article St Alkmund's Church, Derby.

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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at St Alkmund's Church, Derby. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.