Peak Forest, Derbyshire
Historical Description
Peak Forest, a village and a parish in Derbyshire. The village lies 5 miles NE of Buxton, is very picturesque, and has a station on the M.R., and a post office under Stockport; money order office, Tideswell; telegraph office at railway station. The parish comprises 5299 acres; population, 502. There is a parish council consisting of six members. The manor belongs to the Duke of Devonshire. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Southwell; net value, £195 witli residence. Patron, the Duke of Devonshire. The church was built in 1657 by a lady member of the Devonshire family, for the use of the foresters in the king's forest, and though erected in Cromwell's lifetime it was dedicated to Charles, king and martyr. It was a peculiar, extra-parochial and extra-episcopal. The minister held a peculiar court for the proving of wills, making affidavits, creating bonds, &c., but it was as a church where what were locally called foreign marriages were solemnized that it was most widely known. The average number of these runaway marriages from 1657 to 1804 was about ninety a year, and the parties came from all parts of England. The new church, built by the seventh Duke of Devonshire and consecrated in 1877, is also dedicated to King Charles. There are extensive limeworks in the neighbourhood and 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 | High Peak | |
Poor Law union | Chapel-en-le-Frith |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
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.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Peak Forest from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Peak Forest)
Land and Property
A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Derbyshire is online.
Maps
Online maps of Peak Forest are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- 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: