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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Eckington is a historic market town in the North East Derbyshire District, in Derbyshire, England. It is 7 miles (11 km) northeast of Chesterfield and 8.5 miles (14 km) southeast of Sheffield city centre, on the border with South Yorkshire. It had a 2001 UK census population of 11,152, increasing to 11,855 at the 2011 UK census.(These numbers include the hamlets of Bramley, Renishaw, Marsh Lane and Troway which are all within Eckington parish.)
Eckington parish covers an area of 2,089 acres. The geology is the coal measures containing coal and ironstone. The Chesterfield Canal and Midland Railway passed through the parish. The Moss Brook is a tributary of the River Rother.
History
Eckington is recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Echintune, a manor given to Ralph Fitzhubert. Some parts of the parish church of St Peter and St Paul date to 1100.
George Sitwell, son of George and Mary was baptised in 1601 in Eckington. George's father died while he was a child but as an adult he acquired the freehold of land in Eckington and exploited it by mining iron ore. In 1625, he built Renishaw Hall which is now owned by Sir Reresby Sitwell's daughter, Alexandra and her family.
Sitwell exploited the minerals beneath his estate, chiefly iron and built a blast furnace at Plumbley a mile north west of Eckington in the 1630s with his mother's second husband, Henry Wigfall. In 1652 Sitwell built a furnace at Foxbrooke, close to Renishaw, which became the core of the largest ironworks in Derbyshire. Sitwell made saws at Pleasley and in 1656, installed a rolling and slitting mill at Renishaw to supply the rod iron used by numerous local nailmakers.
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During the Industrial Revolution coal and iron ore were mined and local streams, such as the Moss Brook, were harnessed to provide power for factories. The Sitwells built a large foundry and ironworks. Scythes, sickles and nails were made in the town for local use and for export. The Moss Brook was dammed to provide water power at eight sites including ChapelWheel, Carlton Wheel and Fields Wheel, to grind the blades. The remains of an old forge and drift mines exist in the valley. Eckington had a coal mine in the eastern part of the town; this was still operating after 1984.
Historically, Eckington was an ecclesiastical parish in the hundred of Scarsdale in Derbyshire. After 1837 it was in the Chesterfield Poor Law Union. From 1894 until 1974 it was part of the Chesterfield Rural District.
Renishaw
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Renishaw is a village in the North East Derbyshire District within the civil parish of Eckington.
Renishaw lies on the A6135 road between the villages of Eckington and Barlborough. The Chesterfield Canal passes along the edge of the village. While Renishaw is the name for the village as a whole, a part of it, south of the A6135, is named Emmett Carr.
To the northwest of the village is Renishaw Hall, a country house belonging to the Sitwell family, who were owners of the local iron foundry before it was nationalised. Renishaw Ironworks founded by the 17th-century ironmaster, George Sitwell was the main employer in the village for many years before its closure in the 1990s, when British Steel plc closed down non-core parts of its business. The site is now part business park and part housing estate. The other main employer in the area was the National Coal Board. There were several coal pits in the area, some of which originally supplied the iron works.
The route of the Midland Railway from Chesterfield to Sheffield passed the village in the valley to the west, before the direct route through Dronfield and the Bradway Tunnel to the Sheffield Midland station was built. This route was the North Midland Railway from Derby to Leeds.
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.
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