Buy on Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DZNHNPPM Historically Dronfield was the centre of a large and extensive parish including the smaller settlements of Holmesfield, Unstone, Coal Aston, Dore,Totley, Dronfield Woodhouse, Little Barlow, Apperknowle, Cowley, Hundall, Stubley, Summerley, Birchett and Hill Top. The impressive size of the Parish church is an indication of the wealth of the medieval settlement as is the significant number of cruck-framed buildings first identified by Bessie Bunker, the most important of which is in Dronfield’s Church Street. Wills and inventories in the period 1530-1640 show that more than half of testators were farming but there is also evidence of other occupations including emerging metal working, coalmining, lead smelting industries as well as textile trades such as weaving (websters)and fulling, all contributing to the growing wealth of the town. Dronfield’s rich legacy of historic buildings owes much to its location on the edge of the Peak District’s lead-ore wealth, the local mineral wealth of coal and iron, and particularly to the entrepreneurship of individuals such as Ralph Burton and John Rotherham in the 18th century and later of the Lucas family in the 19th and 20th century. This book will look at the buildings left behind and the people who lived, worked and used them It was the development of the Lucas works, the creation of Wilson Cammells and the growth of the mining industry which led to Dronfield’s most rapid period of growth in the second half of the nineteenth century and particularly in the decade 1871-1881. This period saw the development of housing in The Alma, the Dronfield Freehold Land Society estates in Hartington Road and Scarsdale Road, and the many small developments such as West Street and Quoit Green. It also saw the rapid population rise in the town centre with the development of the historic burgage plots behind HIgh Street and down Farwater Lane which in 1881 had a population of 711, many working in metal industries and coal mining. This was the period in which the village of Dronfield acquired the trappings of a town with a local council, new town hall, school board school, town cemetery and railway station. Fortunately it was also a period when the historic houses were protected through their ownership by local manufacturers. The threat to their existence came much later in the post war years when we did lose some important buildings.