Carsington

St Margaret's Church, Carsington, is a Grade II* listed parish church in the Church of England: 122  in Carsington, Derbyshire.

Hopton Hall is an 18th-century country house at Hopton, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire. It is a Grade II listed building. The Manor of Hopton, anciently the seat of the de Hopton family, was acquired by the Gell family in 1553 by Ralph Gell (1491–1564) who also purchased lands at Darley Abbey and Rocester.John Gell was created a baronet in 1642 (see Gell baronets). The Baronetcy was extinct in 1719 and the estate passed to John Eyre in 1732 via his mother Katherine Gell, daughter of 2nd baronet John Gell, at which point Eyre added the surname of Gell. The house has its origins in the 16th century when it was built by Thomas Gell as a two-storey, three-bay manor house. It was extended and remodelled by Philip Eyre Gell in the late 18th century. The north entrance front has three storeys and seven bays, flanked by tower wings with pyramidal roofs.Notable members of the Gell family include the religious patron Katherine Gell, Philip Gell's younger brother, Admiral John Gell and Philip's son Sir William Gell.Philip Gell's daughter and heir married William Pole Thornhill MP, on whose death the estate passed to his kinsman Henry Pole, later known as Henry Chandos-Pole-Gell (High Sheriff of Derbyshire) in 1886. The estate of some 3,700 acres (15 km2) was broken up in the 20th century, a major part being sold to a water authority for the creation of Carsington Reservoir. The house itself was put up for auction in 1989, passing out of the family. The present owner is Sir Bill Thomas and his family, a former senior vice president of Hewlett-Packard Europe who was drafted in by Ed Miliband to chair Labour's "small business taskforce". Thomas and his wife Julie have opened their formal gardens and lake to the public during February and early March for the woodland Snowdrop Walk and during the summer to the Rose Garden. Both periods allow access to the 30 acres (12 ha) of grounds and 2 km (1.2 mi) of signposted paths.The document collection of the Gell family of Hopton Hall is held by the Derbyshire Record Office.

The Hopton Incline was the steepest stretch of conventional, adhesion-worked standard gauge railway in the UK. The incline was situated in sparsely populated, exposed limestone uplands in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England. It is possible that steeper stretches were to be found in sidings, but the Hopton Incline was on the former Cromford and High Peak Railway's single-track main line as inherited by British Railways.

Hopton is a small village adjacent to the village of Carsington and two miles from the market town of Wirksworth in the Peak District. Evidence of humans visiting, possibly 200,000 years ago during a warm period known as the Aveley Interglacial, is given by the discovery of a Middle Paleolithic Acheulean hand axe nearby.Hopton is first mentioned in the Domesday book in 1086 as a berewick (supporting farm) of the town and manor of Wirksworth and its two main industries from ancient times have been farming and lead mining. Hopton lies just off the main B5035 road from Ashbourne to Wirksworth at the northern end of Carsington Water. The village had a long association with the Gell family, who have had assets in the Hopton since 1327, and had extensive lead mining interests in the Wirksworth area and lived at Hopton Hall. Notable members include Sir John Gell who was a Parliamentarian in the English Civil War and Sir William Gell who was an archaeologist. The famous Hopton Incline of the Cromford and High Peak Railway, now part of the High Peak Trail and Pennine Bridleway, is about two-thirds of a mile (1.1 km) north of the village. Modern Hopton is a rather straggling village with a number of houses some of which are popular for self-catering activities for tourists visiting the Peak District, Wirksworth and Carsington Water.

The Carsington Roman Villa is a Roman villa at Scow Brook, Carsington near Wirksworth, Derbyshire, England. The site of the villa is currently submerged under the Carsington Water reservoir. Before the reservoir was built, the villa would have been located along the upper valley of the Scow Brook.

Carsington Water is a reservoir, operated by Severn Trent Water, between Wirksworth and Kniveton in Derbyshire, England. The reservoir takes water from the River Derwent at Ambergate during winter months, pumping up to the reservoir by 10.5-kilometre (6.5 mi) long tunnels and aqueduct. Water is released back into the river during summer months for water abstraction and treatment further downstream. It is England's ninth-largest reservoir with a capacity of 36,331 megalitres.[1] Planning for the reservoir started in the 1960s and construction started in 1979. In 1984, there was a partial collapse of the dam before it was filled. The dam was removed before the construction of a new dam began in 1989. The finished reservoir was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992. The reservoir is a major centre for leisure activities including walking, cycling, fly fishing, birdwatching, sailing, canoeing, and windsurfing. The land surrounding the reservoir, in particular the facilities around the visitor centre, has hosted events including a music festival, the Festival of the Peak.

Callow is a village and a civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales District, in the English county of Derbyshire. At the 2011 Census the population of the civil parish was less than 100. Details are included in the civil parish of Kirk Ireton. It is near the small town of Wirksworth and the reservoir Carsington Water. Callow is recorded as Caldelawe in 1086 as having two caracutes of land as a berewick (supporting farm) of nearby Wirksworth. Callow Hall (not to be confused with Callow Hall at Ashbourne) is a moated site with a seventeenth century gritstone double-bayed main farmhouse building constructed over a thirteenth century undercroft.Callow was one of the manors of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Middle Ages and was involved in a dispute between the Duchy and the Stathams of Morley, who had a tenancy at Callow. "30 mares, 30 Ox, 30 cows and 20 bullocks worth 100 marks were taken from Duchy of Lancaster lands at Morley, Callow and Wirksworth and (the Stathams) cut down John of Gaunt’s trees to the value of £100, dug in his mine, assaulted his free tenants and serfs, destroyed their tenements and practiced such oppressions at Ralph Statham’s court that many of his (John of Gaunts) tenants had left". Ralph Statham died on 13 June 1380 but his sons carried on their feud with the Duchy. On 20 June 1381 Philip of Okeover, one of John of Gaunt's knights with his retainers, struck back at the Stathams with an attack on their lands at Callow. This feud continued in an on-off kind of way throughout the 1380s, as it is recorded again, in 1387. Callow was also one of the lead ore producing manors close to Wirksworth and in 1822 lead miners sinking a shaft at the Dream Mine, on Stainsborough Hill at Callow, discovered the remains of a prehistoric woolly rhinoceros.

Hopton Tunnel is a former railway tunnel in Hopton, Derbyshire. Located on the former Cromford and High Peak Railway. The tunnel was closed along with the line in 1967 and is now in use for the High Peak Trail.

Godfreyhole is a hamlet in Derbyshire, England. It is located at the junction of the B5035 and West End roads, 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Wirksworth, the population taken at the 2011 Census also included in the civil parish of the same name.

Harboro' Rocks (or Harborough Rocks) is a dolomitic limestone hill near the village of Brassington in the Derbyshire Peak District. The summit is 379 metres (1,243 ft) above sea level with views across to Carsington Water. Harboro' Cave is a natural cavern in the rocks where archaeologists have found evidence of human occupants since the Ice Age. Satirist author Daniel Defoe reported in his book Tour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain (published in 1726) that a poor family of seven was living in the cave. Defoe described how the father was a lead miner and was "lean as a skeleton, pale as a dead corps" but that they "seemed to live very pleasantly". The cave is a protected Scheduled Monument. There is a settlement site and chambered cairns nearby. The Golconda lead mine, on the north east side of the hill, was part of the Gell family's Griffe Grange mining liberty, which ran from the summit of Harboro' Rocks to Via Gellia. The mine dates back to the 1700s and the mine shaft is over 100 metres (330 ft) deep. Golconda is a name used for wealthy mines, after the famous Indian Golconda diamond mine. The mine's tunnels enter natural caverns such as the Great Shack. After closing in 1913, the mine was reopened in 1915 to mine baryte until 1953. Furnace-lining bricks have been manufactured from local quartz sand at Harborough brickworks for many years (recently by Hobens Minerals and previously by Swan Ratcliffe).Most of the White Peak is a carboniferous limestone plateau. This unusual jagged outcrop of dolomitic limestone offers interesting buttresses, arêtes and pinnacles for rock climbing (and some easy bouldering) with over 100 graded routes.Nearby Rainster Rocks is another dolomitic limestone crag and is the site of a Romano-British settlement and field system from the 3rd century. The remains include enclosures with walls made of upright boulders (orthostats) and earthwork terraces. Excavations have found pottery fragments, metalwork and coins. The site is a listed ancient Scheduled Monument. Rainster Rocks was also a popular rock climbing location (with over 80 graded routes) and has been climbed for over 100 years. However the landowners have imposed an outright ban on climbing there since 2018.The land around Harboro' Rocks is designated as "Open Access" land for the public, following the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.The High Peak Trail and the Midshires Way footpaths follow the same route along the south west side of the hill. The Limestone Way long-distance footpath passes the north west side of the hill.

Brassington is a village and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales district of Derbyshire, 16 miles north west of Derby. The parish had a population of 573 at the 2011 census.The name, spelled Branzingtune in the Domesday Book, is thought to mean "Brand's people's place". Most of the houses in the village are built of local limestone, and most are 200 or 300 years old; there are 20th-century houses at the south end of the village. The oldest dated house, named Tudor House since the late 19th century, was built in 1615. It is located on Town Street (grid reference SK232543) and was an inn until 1820, when it was bought by the parish and was used as a workhouse until 1848. There were 15 inmates at the 1841 census, but the number rose considerably in 1845, when the Brassington Poor Law Union was wound up and Brassington joined the new Ashbourne Union. The Brassington workhouse, augmented by the nearby George and Dragon pub, served the new union while a new workhouse was built in Ashbourne. The workhouse could hold 130 inmates. The house has been a private house since 1848, and its owner in the 1890s added the words Tudor House to its 1615 datestone. This has the initials of Thomas Westerne, its builder, and his wife Anne. The Norman church, repaired and enlarged in the 19th century, stands on the north side of the steep valley in which the village lies. There were formerly three Nonconformist chapels, two of which are now closed and one demolished. The former Congregational chapel, at the northern entrance to the village, is now the village hall; the Primitive Methodist chapel, built by its members in 1834 above the church on the hillside, is a private house; the Wesleyan Reform chapel, at the west end of the village, was demolished in 2007. A house built on the site incorporates a plaque formerly set high on the chapel's frontage and a brass commemorative plate. In addition to the village hall, a meeting place was provided in the 1990s by a British Legion building in the village centre. There are two pubs, the Olde Gate (where Bonnie Prince Charlie’s soldiers were billeted on their march to London and some of the oak beams came from ships of the Spanish Armada) which has a 1616 datestone and a largely 19th-century interior, and the Miners Arms, which was modernised thirty years ago, and which was once the venue for the manor court and the lead miners' Barmote Court. The school was built in 1872, after the passing of the 1870 Education Act, and is now a primary school. In addition to agriculture, which still provides employment for a few villagers, Brassington was for centuries dependent on lead mining. The rough ground to the east, west and north has the hillocks and hollows of hundreds of abandoned mines; there are also remains of the miners' buildings on some of the sites. There is current employment in the village in heavy goods transport, steel fabrication and furniture manufacture, though most of the villagers are employed elsewhere. Until recently, there was no shop, but in July 2014 the village became the second in the UK (after Clifton, Derbyshire) to have a 'Speedy Shop' installed by local business Villagevending.com. The shop sells a range of essentials and other items using an automatic retailing machine styled like a traditional shop. There are bus services to Ashbourne and Wirksworth. The nearby Harboro' Rocks and Rainster Rocks are dolomitic limestone outcrops. Harboro' Rocks has a history of mining lead and baryte. Harboro' Cave is a natural cavern which was occupied as far back as the Ice Age and it is a Scheduled Monument. The remains of a Romano-British settlement at Rainster Rocks is also a protected Scheduled Monument.The Limestone Way long-distance footpath passes close to the village.

West Derbyshire was a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. From 1885, until it was replaced by the Derbyshire Dales constituency in the 2010 general election, it elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post voting system. It was a safe Conservative seat for most of its existence.