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St Matthew's Church,
Main Road,
Pentrich, Derbyshire.

Cemeteries

This Church has (or had) a graveyard.

Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded about 1150, and we understand it is still open.

St Matthew's Church is a Grade I Listed Building - see the British Listed Buildings website for details.

Kelly's Directory of 1895 describes Pentrich as a township and parish, 5 miles north-east from Belper, 2½ south-west-by-south from Alfreton, 3 west from Ambergate station, and about 1¼ miles from the Butterley station, on the Erewash Valley line of the Midland Railway. The water supply was obtained from one public well! Thankfully this situation had been rectified by 1912, when according to Kelly's of that year, "the village is supplied with water by means of pipes from the Dethick Water Works".

The church of St Matthew (in 1912) was described as "standing on a gentle height", and "a building of stone, consisting of chancel, nave of five bays, aisles, south porch and a low western embattled tower containing 5 bells, two of which are ancient". The others are dated 1715 and 1869. The nave arcades are late Norman, about 1150. The circular font, excluding the base, is also Norman, to which style the lower part of the tower probably belongs, its wall at this point being about 4 feet in thickness. The whole building seems to have been renovated and enlarged in the Perpendicular period, about 1430. "In 1859 it was plainly but carefully restored, with new pews and roofs, at the cost of William, 7th Duke of Devonshire K.G. and in 1875 the chancel was re-floored and re-arranged". The east and south windows are stained and the sills of several windows are composed of sepulchral slabs with rudely incised crosses. There is a monument to Edmund Horne esq. of Butterley Hall, d.1873. In or about 1895 1899 and 1904, the church was adorned with three wall paintings of subjects from the Holy Scripture.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SK3894852573. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• St Matthew's Church, Pentrich shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Pentrich shown on a Google Map.
• Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
• Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
• OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
• A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
• www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Pentrich, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.