A short history of Crich Parish

The name 'Crich' may well have appeared in recognisable form around the end of the first Millennium. It seems to have evolved from the Celtic name for crag or hill ('crue' or 'cryc') - a sign of the importance of having a settlement at the highest point on an ancient north-south routeway running parallel to the River Derwent. This track was not along The Common, as we would know it today. More likely, it was a cattle drovers' route which would have climbed from Ambergate to the Hagg, and then on along the foot of the Tors, to the manor held in the early 1000s by the family of Godwin, the Saxon Earl of Wessex.

Our best record of the village and parish in these times comes from the Norman Domesday book of 1086. Much of the area would have been woodland pasture, where sheep or cattle were allowed to graze along with the King's or Lord's deer. The parish was still mostly woodland in the late 1600s, it was only with the final enclosures of land into farms and the felling of trees to provide for the navy in the Napoleonic wars that this landscape changed dramatically. In 1086 the manor was owned by Ralph Fitzhubert, with land worked by 4 ploughs, and a lead mine (valued then at 30 shillings). He became involved in a civil war and was hanged for his troubles, but the family continued to run the manor. What follows is an abbreviated history of some of the key dates of the next 900 years.