Place:Sawley, Derbyshire, England

Watchers
NameSawley
Alt namesSallesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 70
TypeAncient parish
Coordinates52.867°N 1.283°W
Located inDerbyshire, England
See alsoMorleston and Litchurch Hundred, Derbyshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Sawley and Wilsthorpe, Derbyshire, Englandcivil parish replacing Sawley in 1866
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Sawley is a village and civil parish within the Borough of Erewash, in southeast Derbyshire, England. The population of the civil parish was measured at 6,629 as at the 2011 UK census.

Sawley was originally an ancient parish in the Morleston and Litchurch Hundred of Derbyshire, England. It included the townships of Long Eaton and Wilsthorpe and the chapelry of Wilne.

Sawley ceased to be an ancient parish in 1866 and was replaced by the township of Sawley and Wilsthorpe which is described on a separate page. It would appear that the civil parish of Sawley within the Borough of Erewash has been re-formed since 1974.

History

The old name for Sawley was Sallé. Between Sawley and Church Wilne and Great Wilne (both in Wilne parish) is the junction of the River Derwent and the Trent. It is to this that Sawley owes its position.

The church of All Saints is mostly thirteenth century architecture and contains Saxon and Norman work. and commands a position on a small rise near the river. Sawley Baptist Church, was built on Wilne Lane in 1800.

Up until the 19th century, Sawley was the most important village in the area, commanding the first river crossing on the Trent above Nottingham, known as Harrington Bridge. Travelers on the road to Birmingham had to cross the Trent either by ferry or by ford, and it was not until 1790 that the bridge was built. This was a toll bridge, and charges were levied on all except the Lord of the Manor, his servants and the inhabitants of Sawley and Hemington, Leicestershire located to the south of the river.

In the vicinity of the Sawley churches lies Bothe Hall once owned by the Booth family. The Booths were a wealthy landowning family from Cheshire whose principal seat was at Dunham Massey. Bothe Hall was built between 1660 and 1680, and has an interior that contains some exposed ceiling beams and a regency staircase.

Sawley Cut and the Locks were built around 1796, to bypass difficult and shallow sections of the Trent Navigation, also in response to the Trent Navigation Company loosing out either in construction contracts for or the usage of the Trent and Mersey Canal, Derby Canal, Erewash Canal, and Nottingham Canal. (Wikipedia is not clear on this point.)

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 Sawley, Derbyshire. 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.