Place:Matlock, Derbyshire, England

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

Matlock has been the county town of Derbyshire, England since the County Council moved its office there from Derby in 1956.

It is situated at the southeastern edge of the Peak District. The former spa resort Matlock Bath lies immediately south of the town on the A6 road. The civil parish of Matlock Town had a population in the 2011 UK census of 9,543. The population of the wider Matlock urban area is approximately 20,000 (including Darley Dale, Tansley, Hackney and Matlock Bath). The Matlock area is also considered to include Wirksworth, owing to the close proximity of the two towns. This would bring the area's population closer to 30,000.

Matlock is nine miles (14 km) southwest of Chesterfield, and in easy reach of the cities of Derby (19 miles), Sheffield (20 miles), and Nottingham (29 miles); the Greater Manchester conurbation is 30 miles away. Matlock is within the Derbyshire Dales District, which also includes the towns of Bakewell and Ashbourne, as well as Wirksworth.

It is a former spa town that lies on the River Derwent, and has prospered from both the hydrotherapy industry and the cloth mills constructed on the river and its tributary Bentley Brook.

Matlock was an unimportant collection of small villages in the Wirksworth Hundred — Matlock Town, Matlock Green, Matlock Bridge, Matlock Bank — until thermal springs were discovered in 1698. The population increased rapidly in the 1800s, largely because of the popular hydros which were being built. At one stage there were around twenty hydros, mostly on Matlock Bank, the largest built in 1853 by John Smedley. This building has been the headquarters of the Derbyshire County Council since 1956.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Matlock, Derbyshire.

Matlock was originally an ancient parish in the Wirksworth Hundred of Derbyshire, England. Matlock was an ancient parish without any subsidiary chapelries or townships, but covered more territory than the urban district of post-1894.

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became an urban district. Matlock Bath was separated into another urban district at the same time. In 1924 the two urban districts were merged as The Matlocks and ten years later the urban district name was shortened to "Matlock". Since 1974 Matlock has been the principal town in the non-metropolitan Derbyshire Dales non-metropolitan district.

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.