civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
, England, situated
east by north
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each ...
of
Buxton
Buxton is a spa town in the Borough of High Peak, Derbyshire, England. It is England's highest market town, sited at some above sea level.Peak Dale was 1,020 at the 2011 Census.
Wormhill was mentioned in the
Domesday book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
as belonging to
Henry de Ferrers
Henry de Ferrers (died by 1100), magnate and administrator, was a Norman who after the 1066 Norman conquest was awarded extensive lands in England.
Origins
He was the eldest son of Vauquelin de Ferrers and in about 1040 inherited his father's ...
Henry was given a large number manors in Derbyshire including
Aston-on-Trent
Aston-on-Trent is a village and civil parish in the South Derbyshire district, in the county of Derbyshire, England. The parish had a population of 1,682 at the 2011 Census. It is adjacent to Weston-on-Trent and near Chellaston, very close to t ...
Swarkestone
Swarkestone is a village and civil parish in the South Derbyshire district of Derbyshire, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 187.
Swarkestone has a very old village church, a full cricket pitch, a plant nursery/ garden centre and re ...
. and containing of meadow.''Domesday Book: A Complete Translation''. London: Penguin, 2003. p.749 The name is said by the English Place-Name Society to be derived from the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
'Wyrma's hyll'.
There was a tradition of
wolf hunting
Wolf hunting is the practice of hunting gray wolves ''(Canis lupus)'' or other species of wolves. Wolves are mainly hunted for sport, for their skins, to protect livestock and, in some rare cases, to protect humans. Wolves have been actively hun ...
in Wormhill in the fourteenth century. It was said that a living was made by some and that an annual tribute of wolfheads was shown. It has been reported that the last wolf killed in England was at Wormhill Hall in the 15th century.Werewolves Nigel Suckling, 2006,
From 1863 to 1967 the village was served by
Millers Dale railway station
A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents ...
, some 2 miles away, which was on the
Midland Railway
The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It ama ...
Monsal Trail
The Monsal Trail is a cycling, horse riding and walking trail in the Derbyshire Peak District. It was constructed from a section of the former Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midland Junction Railway, which was built by the Midland Railway in 1 ...
bridleway. A footpath south of the village leads to the nearby
River Wye
The River Wye (; cy, Afon Gwy ) is the fourth-longest river in the UK, stretching some from its source on Plynlimon in mid Wales to the Severn estuary. For much of its length the river forms part of the border between England and Wales ...
Peak District Boundary Walk
The Peak District Boundary Walk is a circular walking trail, starting and finishing at Buxton and broadly following the boundary of the Peak District, Britain's first national park. The route was developed by the Friends of the Peak District (a ...
runs past Wormhill on its way from Buxton to
Peak Forest
Peak Forest is a small village and civil parish on the main road the ( A623) from Chapel-en-le-Frith to Chesterfield in Derbyshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 335.
The village grew from the earlier settlement of ...
.
It has memorials to
James Brindley
James Brindley (1716 – 27 September 1772) was an English engineer. He was born in Tunstead, Derbyshire, and lived much of his life in Leek, Staffordshire, becoming one of the most notable engineers of the 18th century.
Early life
Born i ...
, pioneer builder of Britain's
canal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface f ...
s, who was born in 1716 in the hamlet of Tunstead within Wormhill parish. The well in Wormhill is dedicated to Brindley. As part of the annual well dressing festival the Brindley well is decorated each year and there is also a smaller well dressing in the churchyard of St Margaret's Church in the village. The lower part of a cross shaft and its stepped base stand in the churchyard. A
sundial
A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a f ...
dated 1670 tops the broken shaft. Only the base of the church tower is medieval; the rest of the church was "almost rebuilt" in 1864, and a
transept
A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building with ...
added in 1904–10.
Near the church and Brindley's well can be found the old village stocks. At the north end of the village lies the hamlet of Hargate (now part of Wormhill), where the
industrialist
A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through per ...
Robert Whitehead
Robert Whitehead (3 January 1823 – 14 November 1905) was an English engineer who was most famous for developing the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo.
Early life
He was born in Bolton, England, the son of James Whitehead, ...