Place:Holmesfield, Derbyshire, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Holmesfield is a village and civil parish in the English county of Derbyshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 UK census was 971. The name "Holmesfield" means "raised pasture-land" and is of Norse and Anglo-Saxon origin. Viking influences are also evident with many road names suffixed by "gate", the old Norse word for "way". Holmesfield has been located within the North East Derbyshire District since 1974. Prior to that it was part of the Chesterfield Rural District from 1894. It started as a chapelry within the ancient parish of Dronfield. Holmesfield is sited at approximately 800 feet (240 m) above sea level on the edge of the Peak District National Park, with extensive views from the village over the surrounding hilly terrain. The parish includes a number of farming hamlets such as Millthorpe situated in the neighbouring Cordwell Valley. St. Swithin's parish church can be seen from much of the surrounding area. The main church was built in 1826 but has seen further work in recent years with the vicarage being added in 1999. Still visible in the grounds are the remains of a stone cross from around 641 AD, which would have replaced an original wooden cross erected by monks to mark the place where they would preach. Holmesfield is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as one of the manors belonging to Walter D'Aincourt who was tenant-in-chief of thirteen manors in Derbyshire, one manor in Northamptonshire, four in Yorkshire, nineteen in Lincolnshire and thirty-seven in Nottinghamshire. He made his home in Blankney in Lincolnshire. Another inhabitant, John Frescheville, 1st Baron Frescheville (1607-1682), was Member of Parliament for Derbyshire and sat until 1629 when King Charles I decided to rule without parliament for eleven years. He became Deputy Lieutenant of Derbyshire in 1630, holding the post until 1642. In 1642 he was a commissioner of array and became a captain of horse in the Royalist army during the English Civil War. Although a Royalist, he had useful contacts among the Parliamentarians and was required to pay a modest fine of £287 10s.4d conditional upon endowing the chapel at Holmesfield. [The article about Frescheville in Wikipedia is worth a read.] Sources would appear to indicate that Holmesfield was not on the coal seam evident in the parishes immediately to the east.

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.