Coordinates: 53°8′N 1°36′W / 53.133°N 1.6°W / 53.133; -1.6

Derbyshire

Geography
Status	Ceremonial and (smaller) non-metropolitan county
Region	East Midlands
Area - Total - Admin. council - Admin. area	Ranked 21st 2,625 km2 (1,014 sq mi) Ranked 20th 2,547 km2 (983 sq mi)
Admin HQ	Matlock
ISO 3166-2	GB-DBY
ONS code	17
NUTS 3	UKF12/13
Demographics
Population - Total (2010 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 19th 1,010,600 385 /km2 (1,000 /sq mi) Ranked 11th 763,700
Ethnicity	96.0% White 2.3% S. Asian 1.7% Black, Mixed Race or Chinese
Politics
Arms of Derbyshire County Council Derbyshire County Council http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/
Executive	Conservative
Members of Parliament	Margaret Beckett (L) Jessica Lee (C) Natascha Engel (L) Toby Perkins (L) Chris Williamson (L) Andrew Bingham (C) Nigel Mills (C) Patrick McLoughlin (C) Dennis Skinner (L) Heather Wheeler (C) Pauline Latham (C)
Districts
1. High Peak 2. Derbyshire Dales 3. South Derbyshire 4. Erewash 5. Amber Valley 6. North East Derbyshire 7. Chesterfield 8. Bolsover 9. Derby (Unitary)

Derbyshire (ⁱ/ˈdɑrbɨʃə/ DAR-bi-shər or /ˈdɑrbɪʃɪər/ DAR-bi-sheer; abbreviated Derbys. or Derbs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The southern extremity of the Pennine range of hills extends into the north of the county. The county contains within its boundary of approximately 225 miles part of the National Forest. It borders on Greater Manchester to the northwest, West Yorkshire to the north, South Yorkshire to the northeast, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the southeast, Staffordshire to the west and southwest and Cheshire also to the west. In 2003 the Ordnance Survey placed Church Flatts farm, near Coton in the Elms, as the furthest point from the sea in Great Britain.^[1][2]

The city of Derby is now a unitary authority area, but remains part of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. The non-metropolitan county contains 30 towns with between 10,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. There is a large amount of sparsely populated agricultural upland: 75% of the population live in 25% of the area.^{[citation needed]}

History[link]

The area that is now Derbyshire was first visited, probably briefly, by humans 200,000 years ago during the Aveley interglacial as evidenced by a Middle Paleolithic Acheulian hand axe found near Hopton.

^[3]

Further occupation came with the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age when Mesolithic hunter gatherers roamed the hilly tundra.^[4] The evidence of these nomadic tribes is centred around limestone caves located on the Nottinghamshire border. Deposits left in the caves date the occupancy at around 12,000 to 7,000 BCE.^[5]

The henge monument at Arbor Low

Burial mounds of Neolithic settlers are also situated throughout the county. These chambered tombs were designed for collective burial and are mostly located in the central Derbyshire region.^[5] There are tombs in Minning Low, and Five Wells, which date back to between 2000 and 2500 BCE.^[6] Three miles west of Youlgreave lies the Neolithic henge monument of Arbor Low, which has been dated to 2500 BCE.

It is not until the Bronze Age that real signs of agriculture and settlement are found in the county. In the moors of the Peak District signs of clearance, arable fields and hut circles were discovered after archeological investigation. However this area and another settlement at Swarkestone are all that have been found.^[7]

During the Roman invasion the invaders were attracted to Derbyshire because of the lead ore in the limestone hills of the area. They settled throughout the county with forts built near Brough in the Hope Valley and near Glossop. Later they settled around Buxton, famed for its warm springs, and set up a fort near modern-day Derby in an area now known as Little Chester.^[7]

Several kings of Mercia are buried in the Repton area.^[8]

Following the Norman Conquest, much of the county was subject to the forest laws. To the northwest was the Forest of High Peak under the custodianship of William Peverel and his descendants. The rest of the county was bestowed upon Henry de Ferrers, a part of it becoming Duffield Frith. In time the whole area was given to the Duchy of Lancaster. Meanwhile the Forest of East Derbyshire covered the whole county to the east of the River Derwent from the reign of Henry II to that of Edward I.^[9]

Economy[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The rugged moorland edge of the southern Pennines at Kinder Downfall

Derbyshire is a mixture of a rural economy in the west, with a former coal mining economy in the northeast (Bolsover district), the Erewash Valley around Ilkeston and in the south around Swadlincote. The landscape varies from typical arable country in the flat lands to the south of Derby, to the hill farming of the high gritstone moorlands of the southern Pennines, which effectively begin to the north of the city. This topology and geology has had a fundamental effect on Derbyshire's development throughout its history. In addition it is rich in natural resources like lead, iron, coal, and limestone. The limestone outcrops in the central area led to the establishment of large quarries to supply the industries of the surrounding towns with lime for building and steel making, and latterly in the 20th century cement manufacture. The industrial revolution also increased demand for building stone, and in the late 19th & early 20th century the railways' arrival led to a large number of stone quarries to exploit the natural resources of the area. This industry has left its mark on the countryside but is still a major industry: a lot of the stone is supplied as crushed stone for road building and concrete manufacture, and is moved by rail. The Limestone areas of central Derbyshire were found to contain veins of lead ore, and these were mined from Roman times.

the Ruins of the Magpie Mine near Sheldon

Its remoteness in the late 18th century and an abundance of fast-flowing streams led to a proliferation of water power at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, following the mills pioneered by Richard Arkwright. For this reason, among others, Derbyshire has been said to be the home of the Industrial Revolution, and part of the Derwent Valley has been given World Heritage status.

Nationally famous companies in Derbyshire are Thorntons just south of Alfreton and JCB subsidiary JCB-Power Systems have an engine factory in South Derbyshire. Ashbourne Water used to be bottled in Buxton by Nestlé Waters UK until 2006 and Buxton Water still is. Other major employers in the county, especially around the Derby area, are Rolls-Royce plc, Bombardier Transportation and Toyota.

Politics[link]

Derbyshire has a three-tier local government since the local government reorganisation in 1974. It has a county council based in Matlock and eight district councils and since 1998, a unitary authority of Derby. Derby remains part of Derbyshire only for ceremonial purposes.

County Hall, Matlock

Derbyshire has become smaller during government re-organisation over the years. The Sheffield suburbs Mosborough, Totley and Dore were previously parts of the county, but were lost to South Yorkshire in the late 1960s. Marple Bridge was transferred to the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport in Greater Manchester.^{[citation needed]} However, Derbyshire gained part of the Longdendale valley and Tintwistle from Cheshire in 1974.

At the third tier are the parish councils, which do not cover all areas. The eight district councils in Derbyshire and the unitary authority of Derby are shown in the map above.

These district councils are responsible for local planning and building control, local roads, council housing, environmental health, markets and fairs, refuse collection and recycling, cemeteries and crematoria, leisure services, parks, and tourism.^[10] Education, social services, libraries, main roads, public transport, policing and fire services, trading standards, waste disposal and strategic planning are the responsibility of the County Council.^[10]

The county is divided into ten constituencies for the election of Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. As of May 2010, five constituencies are represented by Labour MPs, while the remaining five elected a Conservative MP. Derbyshire residents are part of the electorate for the East Midlands constituency for elections to the European Parliament.^[11]

Although Derbyshire is in the East Midlands, some parts, such as High Peak, are closer to the northern cities of Manchester and Sheffield and these parts do receive services which are more affiliated with northern England; for example, the North West Ambulance Service, Granada Television and United Utilities serve the High Peak and some NHS Trusts within this region are governed by the Greater Manchester Health Authority. Outside the main city of Derby, the largest town in the county is Chesterfield.

Education[link]

One of many Victorian village schools in Derbyshire

For a list of individual schools see   Category:Schools in Derbyshire
The Derbyshire school system is comprehensive with no selective schools.

The independent sector includes Trent College and The Elms School- junior school to Trent College are located near Derby.

Settlements[link]

This is a list of the towns in Derbyshire.

Sport[link]

The county has two football teams currently playing in the Football League:

• Derby County F.C.
• Chesterfield F.C..

There are also many non-league teams playing throughout the county, most notably Alfreton Town F.C. who play in the Conference National. The county is also now home to the world's oldest football club, Sheffield F.C. who have their home ground at Dronfield in North East Derbyshire.

Derbyshire also has a cricket team based at the County Cricket Ground. Derbyshire County Cricket Club currently play in Division two of the County Championship. There are also rugby league clubs based in the north of the county, the North Derbyshire Chargers and in Derby (Derby City RLFC). The County has numerous Rugby Union Clubs, including Derby, Matlock, Ilkeston, Ashbourne, Bakewell and Amber Valley

The county is a popular area for a variety of recreational sports such as rock climbing, hill walking, hang gliding, caving, sailing on its many reservoirs, and cycling along the many miles of disused rail tracks that have been turned into cycle trails, such as the Monsal Trail and High Peak Trail.

Local attractions[link]

The scenic Derbyshire that attracts tourists

The county of Derbyshire has many attractions for both tourists and local people. The county offers spectacular Peak District scenery such as Mam Tor, Kinder Scout, and other more metropolitan attractions such as Bakewell, Buxton, and Derby. Local places of interest include Bolsover Castle, Castleton, Chatsworth House, Crich Tramway Museum, Peak Rail steam railway, Midland Railway steam railway, Dovedale, Haddon Hall, Heights of Abraham and Matlock Bath.^[12]

In the north of the county, three large reservoirs, Howden, Derwent and Ladybower, were built during the early part of the 20th century to supply the rapidly growing populations of Sheffield, Derby and Leicester with drinking water. The land around these is now extensively used for leisure pursuits like walking and cycling, as the surrounding catchment area of moorland is protected from development, as part of the Peak District National Park.

There are many properties and lands in the care of the National Trust, located in Derbyshire that are open to the public, such as Calke Abbey, Hardwick Hall, High Peak Estate, Ilam Park, Kedleston Hall, Longshaw Estate near Hathersage, and Sudbury Hall on the Staffordshire border.

Notable gardens in Derbyshire include the Royal Horticultural Society recommended Bluebell Arboretum, a rare tree garden located just within the county border near the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Lea gardens, a Rhododendron garden at the village of Lea near Matlock, and the 17th-18th century French style formal gardens at Melbourne Hall, Melbourne.

County emblems[link]

Flag of Derbyshire

As part of a 2002 marketing campaign, the plant conservation charity Plantlife chose the Jacob's Ladder as the county flower.

In September 2006, an unofficial county flag was introduced, largely on the initiative of BBC Radio Derby.^[13] The flag consists of a St. George cross encompassing a golden Tudor Rose, which is an historical symbol of the county. The blue field represents the many waters of the county, its rivers and reservoirs, while the cross is green to mark the great areas of countryside.

Demographics[link]

In 1801 the population was 147,481^[16][17] According to the UK Census 2001 there were 956,301 people spread out over the county's 254,615 hectares.^[18] This was estimated to have risen to 990,400 in 2006.^[19]

The county's population grew by 3.0% from 1991 to 2001 which is around 21,100 people. This figure is higher than the national average of 2.65% but lower than the East Midlands average of 4.0%. The county as a whole has an average population density of 2.9 people per hectare making it less densely populated than England as a whole.^[20] The density varies considerably throughout the county with the lowest being in the region of Derbyshire Dales at 0.88, and highest outside of the main cities in the region of Erewash which has 10.04 people per hectare.^[15]

In literature and popular culture[link]

In Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, Pemberley—the country home of Fitzwilliam Darcy—is situated in Derbyshire. In that novel, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire is named as one of the estates Elizabeth Bennet visits before arriving at Pemberley. In the 2005 film adaptation of the novel, Chatsworth House itself represents Pemberley. Mr. Darcy is described as "owning half of Derbyshire", to which Elizabeth replies, "The miserable half?" In another scene, various characters discuss a day trip to Matlock.

Sir Walter Scott's 1823 novel Peveril of the Peak is partly set in Derbyshire.

The events of the play Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, take place in the fictional country house of Sidley Park in Derbyshire.

Alfreton is mentioned in the novel Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, when a character gets a train to Alfreton and walks to Crich to see a lover.

George Eliot's novel Adam Bede is set in a fictional town based on Wirksworth.

Georgette Heyer's detective/romance novel The Toll-Gate is set in 1817 around a fictional toll-gate in Derbyshire.

The 1969 film Women in Love by Ken Russell had various scenes filmed in and around Elvaston Castle, most notably the Greco-Roman wrestling scene, which was filmed in the castle's Great Hall.

The 1986 film Lady Jane by Trevor Nunn, starring Helena Bonham Carter, has scenes filmed at Haddon Hall.

The 1987 film The Princess Bride by Rob Reiner, starring Cary Elwes, was filmed in Derbyshire and includes scenes at Haddon Hall and in the White Peak and Dark Peak.

The 1988 film Lair of the White Worm by Ken Russell, starring Hugh Grant, was filmed in Derbyshire. The opening title sequence is of Thor's Cave in the Manifold valley.

See also[link]

• List of Lord Lieutenants of Derbyshire
• List of High Sheriffs for Derbyshire
• Custos Rotulorum of Derbyshire - Keepers of the Rolls
• Derbyshire constituency list of MPs
• Derbyshire lead mining history
• List of football clubs in Derbyshire

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Derbyshire

• Smith, Roly (1999). Towns & Villages of Britain: Derbyshire. Cheshire: Sigma Press. ISBN 1-85058-622-5. 
• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1953). The Buildings of England: Derbyshire. Middlesex: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-071008-6. 
• Pevsner & Williamson, Elizabeth (1978). The Buildings of England: Derbyshire. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-071008-6. 

Neighbouring counties

	Greater Manchester	West Yorkshire	South Yorkshire
	Cheshire		Nottinghamshire
		Derbyshire    East
	Staffordshire		Leicestershire

External links[link]

• artsderbyshire.org.uk - Derby & Derbyshire arts guide
• Derbyshire Extensive Urban Survey English Heritage and Derbyshire County Council
• Derbyshire at the Open Directory Project
• Flora of Derbyshire - Maps and information on vascular plant distribution

John Derbyshire (born June 3, 1945) is a British-American writer, journalist and commentator. He formerly wrote a column in National Review. He has also written for the New English Review. These columns cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race.^[1][2] Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year". His 2004 non-fiction book, Prime Obsession, won the Mathematical Association of America's inaugural Euler Book Prize.^[3] A new political book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, was released in September 2009.

Derbyshire attended the Northampton School for Boys and graduated from University College London, where he studied mathematics. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked on Wall Street as a computer programmer.

[edit] Beliefs and disagreements with fellow National Review writers

Derbyshire has differed from his fellow writers at National Review on many subjects. For example, Derbyshire supported Michael Schiavo's position in the Terri Schiavo case, ridiculed George W. Bush's "itty-bitty tax cut, paid for by dumping a slew of federal debt on your children and grandchildren",^[4] has derided Bush in general for being too sure of his religious convictions and for his "rich-kid-ness",^[5] dismisses small-government conservatism as unlikely to ever take hold (although he is not unsympathetic to it), has called for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (but favored the invasion), opposes market reforms or any other changes in Social Security, is pro-choice on abortion, supports euthanasia in a fairly wide range of circumstances, and has suggested that he might (in a time of international crisis) vote for Hillary Clinton as president.^[6]

Derbyshire's views on the Schiavo case attracted criticism from fellow writers at National Review Online such as Ramesh Ponnuru.^[7] The Derbyshire-Ponnuru dispute arose again over Ponnuru's recently published book, Party of Death. Derbyshire reviewed the book harshly in the New English Review,^[8] and Ponnuru replied on NRO with a strongly worded rebuttal.^[9]

Though Derbyshire broadly agrees with many other writers at National Review Online on immigration, he encountered strong opposition from former NRO blogger John Podhoretz, who described Derbyshire's comments on restricting immigration to maintain "ethnic balance" in severe terms: "But maintaining 'ethnic balance' is not fine. It is chillingly, horrifyingly not fine."^[10] In response, fellow Corner contributor Jonah Goldberg, who described himself as philosophically "in the middle" of the two, noted:

I should say that I think JPod is getting too hung up on the phrase "ethnic balance" as a codeword for all sorts of unlovely things. It seems to me that if you're going to sit down and have any immigration policy at all, it's unavoidable that you're going to address the issue of ethnic balance in one way or another, no matter what you call it. Ultimately, you have to choose where people come from if you have an immigration policy, even if you emphasize other factors like skills or family unification. So you can either look at it directly or you can skirt around it. But you can't avoid it.^[11]

He wrote about American schooling in his book We Are Doomed, "Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling." He further argued that people "had better brace ourselves for the catastrophe" coming as a result.^[12]

Derbyshire also has said that America would be better off if women did not have the right to vote.^[13] In 2005, in a monthly column containing a series of miscellaneous musings, he stated that women's physical attractiveness peaks between ages 15–20,^[14] a comment which also drew considerable criticism.^[15]

Comments on race and multiculturalism[link]

In April 2012, Derbyshire wrote an article for Taki's Magazine titled "The Talk: Nonblack Version." The article was a response to reports in the news media of 'talks' given by African-American parents to their children warning them against white authority figures. The article, which he couched in terms of purported advice he had given his own children on dealing with African Americans, describes 5% of black people as "ferociously hostile" to whites. He then advises his readers to avoid settling in black neighborhoods, avoid events that draw large numbers of black people, and refrain from helping black people who seem to be in distress. He also advises white readers to scrutinize black politicians more heavily than white ones, to cultivate friendships with the handful of "intelligent and well socialized blacks" for reasons of public relations, and referred to the well documented statistic that the average intelligence of black people is lower than that of white people.^[16] Derbyshire's column immediately provoked condemnation from across the political spectrum. Derbyshire's editor at the conservative publication National Review, Rich Lowry, described the piece as "appalling."^[17] On April 7, Lowry announced that Derbyshire had been dismissed from National Review: "We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we'd never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways."^[18] In response to the commentary provoked by his piece, Derbyshire wrote a more extensive explanation of the points made in the article on his home page.^[19]

Derbyshire also defended his position in an interview with Alex Kurtagić for the racist white nationalist American Renaissance magazine^[20].

After the National Review termination, Derbyshire was picked up by and is now writing for the VDARE website. A 2012 statement by him on the site that "White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with" attracted strong criticism. He responded by arguing that African-Americans implicitly agree given that they have been willing to live in the majority white U.S.^[21]

Mathematics[link]

Derbyshire's book, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics was first published in hardcover in 2003 and then paperback in 2004. It focuses on the Riemann hypothesis, one of the Millennium Problems.^[22] The book is aimed, as Derbyshire puts it in his prologue, "at the intelligent and curious but nonmathematical reader... I think I have pitched my book to the level of a person who finished high school math satisfactorily and perhaps went on to a couple of college courses...."

Prime Obsession explores such topics as complex numbers, field theory, the prime number theorem, the zeta function, the harmonic series, and others. The biographical sections give relevant information about the lives of mathematicians who worked in these areas, including Euler, Gauss, Dirichlet, Lobachevsky, Chebyshev, Vallée-Poussin, Hadamard, as well as Riemann himself.

In 2006, Joseph Henry Press published another Derbyshire book of popular mathematics: Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra.

Appearance in Bruce Lee movie[link]

Derbyshire had an uncredited role in Meng long guojiang (released in the West as Way of the Dragon and Return of the Dragon), a 1972 martial arts film starring Bruce Lee.^[23] Of landing the part, Derbyshire says: "The casting director had obviously just trawled around the low-class guesthouses for unemployed foreigners of a sufficiently thuggish appearance." ^[24]

Personal life[link]

Derbyshire is married to Lynette Rose, a Chinese citizen,^[25][26] and has two children, a daughter, Nellie, and a son, Danny. He lives in Huntington, New York. He often recounted observations from his personal life in his bi-monthly column "The Straggler" in National Review. In a July 2011 blog post, Derbyshire stated that his sixteen-year-old son, Danny, "has set his heart on joining the military" and is "immovable on this, simply won’t consider anything else." His son is set to be enlisted in mid-2013.^[12]

He is currently undergoing treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia.^[27]

Published works[link]

• Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997) ISBN 0-312-15649-9
• Fire From the Sun (Xlibris Corporation, 2000) ISBN 0-7388-4721-6
• Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics (Plume Books, 2003) ISBN 0-452-28525-9
• Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra (Joseph Henry Press, 2006) ISBN 0-309-09657-X
• We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (Crown Forum, 2009) ISBN 0-307-40958-9, ISBN 978-0-307-40958-4

He has also written numerous articles for various publications, including National Review, The New Criterion, and The Washington Times and maintained a weekly audio commentary on current events on the National Review website.

References[link]