Alvaston, Derbyshire
Historical Description
Alvaston, a township and a parish, formed from the civil parish of St Michael, Derbyshire, on the Derwent river, near the M.R., 3 miles SE of Derby, under which it has a post, money order, and telegraph office. Acreage, 2154; population of the civil parish of Alvaston and Bolton, 3116; of the ecclesiastical parish of Alvaston, 2144. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Southwell; net value, £170 with residence. Patrons, the Parishioners. The church, which is in the Early English style, was rebuilt in 1856. There is a Wesleyan chapel.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Derbyshire | |
| Hundred | Morleston and Litchurch | |
| Poor Law union | Shardlow |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The Phillimore transcript of Marriages at Alvaston 1614-1812, Derbyshire is available to browse online.
The register for both Alvaston and Boulton includes baptisms and burials 1614-1809, and marriages 1614-1812; and there is a separate register of baptisms and burials for Alvaston only, 1810-12.
Ancestry.co.uk, in conjunction with the Derbyshire Record Office, have the Church of England Baptisms (1538-1916), Marriages and Banns (1538-1932), and Burials (1538-1991) online.
Churches
Church of England
St. Michael (parish church)
St. Michael's church, entirely rebuilt in 1855 at a cost of £2,200, is a stone edifice in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and an embattled western tower of Perpendicular date, with pinnacles, containing a clock with quarter chimes and 6 bells, presented by Mr. William Bradshaw, of Nottingham, as a memorial to his uncle, the late G. B. Mills esq. of this parish: two remarkable sepulchral slabs, now preserved in the porch, and apparently Early English, were found under the foundations of the old tower: the monuments removed from the old church include, in the chancel, a tablet with arms, crest and motto to John Tempest Borrow esq. (1781), and another to Thomas Allestree (1740); against the east wall of the south aisle is an old and disfigured alabaster slab to Ralph Newham, dated 1579; there is also a marble mural monument to the Rev. Samuel Hey, vicar of Ockbrook, and 30 years curate from 1809 to 1839 of this parish, d. 14 April, 1852, and two brasses, placed in 1894 in memory of Charles Sherwin and John Hewitt, churchwardens: the piscina belonging to the old church has been replaced in the present chancel: the church plate includes a paten dated 1736, and a chalice 1662, both of silver: the font was erected in 1859, as a thank-offering for the taking of Sebastopol, 9 Sept. 1855: a new organ was provided in 1904 at a cost of £400: there are 374 sittings. An addition of a quarter of an acre was made to the churchyard in 1900, at a cost of £160.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Alvaston from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, 1848 (Alvaston)
- Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, 1899
Land and Property
A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Derbyshire is online.
Maps
Online maps of Alvaston are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Derbyshire papers online: