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Overview

The ice age

The present day outline and shape of Hartshorne was formed by glaciers in the last ice age. The glaciers shaped and rounded off the small hills known as nobs locally and scooped out the shallow valleys.

No doubt early man colonised the area after the ice retreated, although no remains have been found of stone age man. A bronze age spearhead was found at Daniel Hayes farm and is now in Derby museum. The area was settled by Angles and Saxons and then by the Vikings and allies who conquered the Saxons in the 800 AD era. Repton was the capital town of the Saxon kingdom of Mercia but was captured by the Viking raiders who ruled the area known as Danelaw. Settlements in the Repton/Hartshorne area were in part Saxon and some Danish or Viking.

Iron age Hartshorne

A quern stone for grinding corn was found in a sandpit belonging to Searankes Limited. This sandpit is now the recreation ground behind Dunsmore Way.

Similar ones have been found at Ashby, Willington and Swarkstone, the last 2 of which are now in Derby museum.

The Norman Conquest

Then England was conquered by the Norman's in 1066 and at the time of their Domesday survey in 1086, Hartshorne belonged to the Norman family of Henry de Ferrers. Later on t the monks of the Priory of Repton had lands, a moiety of a park and the right of free warren over the Manor of Hartshorne. A list of Patrons of the manor includes the de la Wards, Meynells, Dethicks, the Earl of Shrewsbury and Chesterfield.

More information form about this time is found in the following Document, Hartshorne Manor provided by Mr Roy Williams.
(29/09/10)

Hartshorne in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I

As soon as Queen Elizabeth took the throne she put into action the militia plans of her father Henry VIII to have regular musters of county armed forces, that every hamlet and parish pay for so many armed men for national defence. The muster roll for Hartshorne in 1558 was as follows:

In the Hundred of De Greisley (Gresley). The village of Hartshorne supplied:

Able men with ye sayd constablerye yt be wythowt harness} v wherof {Archers iij, Bilmen ij.

Harnes for j archer and j billmen for ye same constablerye. Every man was liable to serve between the age of 15-60, only peers and priests alone excepted (it appears that Bilmen were pikemen wearing a kind of cheap halbert).

Hartshorne in 1704 had to supply a man for army service. Jeremiah Derricke Constable of Hartshorn supplied one Samual Harpur of Hartshorn aged about 20 years, listed with Captain George Harrison in the above said Regiment of Marines, the artikles or Warr read to him, gave him Twenty shillings advance.

The regiment was The Honoble Brigadeer Holts. Regiment of Marines.

Hartshorne in the 17th century

The parish was a small one of about 100-200 inhabitants, mostly engaged in farming. Most important civil and religious matters were centred on Repton or Lichfield.

In the Civil War of 1640 the village was of the Royalist cause. In the years after the Civil War, Parliament forbade work on certain religious days and the parish wardens records show that one or two men were paid to keep watch from the church tower in case anyone dared to work in the fields.

The majority of parishioners were Church of England, but a small number were recorded as Non-Conformists or Roman Catholics.

Medieval times

In Medieval times there were two settlements that made up the manor. These were upper town grouped around the church and the Nether Town lower down the valley around the present day Nether Hall. Short Hazels was a manor farm and the owners in the middle ages were a family called Royll's who were the leading church wardens. These were usually the small number of major landowners/farmers in the parish and effectively, through the church, ran the parish. Up to the enclosure act of 1765 farming was usually of the open field system - the inhabitants owning strips of cultivated land in various parts of the parish and also having the right to pasture and fuel gathering on the common lands and wastes. The various streams were also dammed to make fish ponds and water meadows.

The enclosure that took place in 1765 was instigated by the large landowners in order to make farming more efficient. It effectively took the common lands and wastes from the peasants/labourers and consolidated ownership of all land into a few hands. It led to a different system of farming and increased in output of crops and animals.

At about this time, the Industrial Revolution was beginning and one early result was the manufacture of steel screws at the screw mill, a water mill on the Ticknall road. In the late 1700's and early 1800's small clay/pottery works were started up in the southern area of the parish.

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