II. 



THE BRADSHAWES OF BRADSHAW. 



By C. E. Bradshaw Bowles, M.A. 



HAPEL-EN-LE-FRITH— or the Chapel in the Forest 

 — in its very name, not only suggests to the antiquary 

 I the origin of some of our old Peak families, but also 

 conjures for him, in vivid colours, the picture of what 

 life must have been in North Derbyshire soon after the Xorman 

 Conquest, when it probably closely resembled the more modern 

 life of settlers in some of our colonies, for it entailed the 

 laborious" clearance of the rough timber and undergrowth, which, 

 we can imagine, clothed our valleys, and the lower part of the 

 hills, before any tillage was possible, followed by the erection, 

 perhaps, of timber-built dwellings, by-and-by to develop into the 

 picturesque stone hall of the Tudor and Stuart period, our 

 interest and delight to-day. The Church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. 

 dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, was built on Crown Land, pur- 

 chased from William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, in 1235, by the 

 foresters and keepers of the deer in the King's Forest of the 

 Peak, after they had grown into a settlement sufficiently impor- 

 tant and wealthy to build a church, and sufficiently thoughtful 

 to require one. These foresters and verderers had been 

 originally appointed by William Peverel when, on behalf of 

 his royal master, he converted into a hunting ground the 

 territorj- of the High Peak, which at the time of the Domesday 

 survey is said to have been little more than rough wood and 

 waste- land, profitless alike for man and beast. "The whole 

 of Longdendale ' (the division or ward which contained Chapel- 

 en-le-Frith), says the Domesday Book, " is waste. Th:;ie is 



