Derbyshire appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 with 327 recorded settlements, making it one of the more comprehensively surveyed counties in William the Conqueror's great survey of England. The county's total assessed value at the time of the survey was approximately 1,043 shillings, spread across a landscape of upland moors, fertile river valleys and ancient woodland that shaped both the density and wealth of its settlements.
What is Derbyshire's Domesday Record?
When William I ordered his great survey in 1085, Derbyshire was a county in transition. The Norman Conquest had swept away almost the entire Anglo-Saxon landowning class within two decades, and the Domesday Book records the new order in meticulous detail — who held what land, what it was worth, how many ploughlands it contained, and crucially, what it had been worth before the Conquest. For Derbyshire, that comparison tells a story of disruption, recovery and, in some parts of the county, significant decline.
The 327 settlements recorded for Derbyshire range from prosperous manors on the limestone plateau of the Peak District to small, half-wasted vills in the northern uplands where the effects of William's brutal Harrying of the North in 1069–70 were still being felt. Several Derbyshire entries record land as waste — a Domesday term indicating that settlements had been deliberately destroyed or had simply collapsed economically in the aftermath of the Conquest.
The Most Valuable Derbyshire Settlements in 1086
Among the 327 recorded places, four manors share the distinction of being the most valuable in the county, each assessed at 40 shillings: Alsop, Eaton, Parwich and Hanson. That these four top the list — rather than the county town — is significant. All four lie in the limestone uplands of the Peak District, an area of ancient settlement where agricultural land was productive despite the difficult terrain.
Parwich, in the White Peak, is a particularly interesting case. It was a place of considerable importance in the pre-Conquest period and its high Domesday valuation reflects genuine economic resilience. The village survives today as a quiet limestone settlement, but its Domesday entry marks it as one of the premier manors in eleventh-century Derbyshire.
Derby itself — the county's principal urban settlement — is recorded at 30 shillings, slightly below the four leading rural manors. This reflects the disruption that Derby had suffered in the years since the Conquest. The town had been a significant Anglo-Danish borough before 1066, and its reduced valuation in 1086 suggests it had not yet fully recovered. The Domesday commissioners noted burgesses, churches and commercial activity, but the picture is one of a town rebuilding rather than flourishing.
Who Held the Land? Derbyshire's Tenants-in-Chief
The ownership map of Domesday Derbyshire is dominated by a small number of powerful men, and none more so than the king himself.
King William held 133 manors in Derbyshire directly — an extraordinarily high proportion, and one that reflects the strategic importance of the Peak District. Much of this royal estate was ancient demesne, land that had been in royal hands before the Conquest and which William retained as the Crown's direct resource base in the north midlands. The Peak Forest area in particular was valuable hunting territory, and maintaining direct royal control over it was a political as much as an economic decision.
The second great landowner in the county was Henry de Ferrers, with 116 manors. Henry was one of William's most trusted lieutenants, a Norman lord who had accompanied the Conqueror from Normandy and been rewarded lavishly with English lands. His Derbyshire holdings formed the core of what would become the great Ferrers earldom, centred on Tutbury just over the Staffordshire border. His son Robert would become the first Earl of Derby, and the family's Domesday holdings in this county were the foundation of that later power.
Ralph son of Hubert held 40 manors, making him the third-largest landowner in the county. Less well known than Ferrers, Ralph represents the tier of middling Norman lords whose names are familiar to Domesday specialists but rarely appear in popular history. His 40 Derbyshire manors nonetheless made him a figure of genuine local consequence.
William Peverel held 17 manors. Peverel is a name with a particular resonance in Derbyshire: he held Peverel's Castle — what we now call Peck's Castle or, more commonly, Peak Castle (Castle Donington's cousin in the north of the county) — and his holdings in the Peak District gave him military as well as economic influence in one of the most strategically sensitive parts of Norman England.
Finally, the Abbey of Burton (St Mary and St Modwen) held 16 manors in Derbyshire. Ecclesiastical landholding of this kind was typical of the Domesday landscape: Burton Abbey, just across the Staffordshire border, had accumulated substantial Derbyshire estates through pre-Conquest gifts and post-Conquest confirmations. Church land was generally recorded as more stable and consistently valued than lay holdings, and Burton's Derbyshire manors reflect that pattern.
Reading Derbyshire's Domesday Landscape Today
For local historians and metal detectorists working in Derbyshire, the Domesday Book is not merely a historical curiosity — it is a map of the county's oldest documented landscape. Every field walked, every ploughed valley surveyed, potentially overlaps with a settlement that was already ancient when the Norman commissioners passed through in 1086.
The challenge lies in the research. Domesday entries use Norman scribal forms of place names that bear little resemblance to modern spellings. Cross-referencing a Domesday vill with its modern successor requires comparing Latin forms against later medieval documents, estate records, and landscape evidence — a process that can take days of archival work for a single parish. Tracking who held a manor, what it was worth, and how it changed hands between 1066 and 1086 involves navigating complex overlapping layers of record that are scattered across county archives, national repositories and specialist databases.
This is precisely the kind of research that Aubrey Research automates. Rather than spending weeks piecing together a single manor's history from fragmented sources, the Aubrey Research tool generates a detailed historical report for any location in England, drawing on Domesday records, manorial histories and much more. You can see what a finished report looks like at the sample report.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many settlements does Derbyshire have in the Domesday Book? Derbyshire has 327 settlements recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, making it one of the more thoroughly surveyed counties in the survey.
What was the most valuable manor in Domesday Derbyshire? Four manors share the top valuation of 40 shillings each: Alsop, Eaton, Parwich and Hanson. Derby, the county town, was assessed at 30 shillings.
Who was the largest landowner in Domesday Derbyshire? King William held 133 manors directly in Derbyshire, making him by far the largest single landholder in the county. Henry de Ferrers was the largest private tenant-in-chief with 116 manors.
Why does the Domesday Book matter for Derbyshire local history? The Domesday survey provides the earliest systematic record of settlement, land ownership and agricultural value for every part of Derbyshire. For local historians and researchers, it establishes who controlled the land in 1086 and what it was worth — a baseline from which all later manorial and estate history flows.