History
Bretby is believed to be the site of a major battle between the Danes and kingdom of Mercia in AD880.
This manor (Bretebi) was in the Domesday Book in 1086. Under the title of “The land of the King (in Derbyshire” it said:
In Newton Solney and Bretby Ælfgar had seven carucates of land to the geld. There is land for six ploughs. There the king has one plough and nineteen villans and one bordar with five ploughs. There are 12 acres (49,000 m2) of meadow, woodland pasture two leagues long and three furlongs broad. TRE as now worth one hundred shillings.
In 1209, Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester granted the manor of Bretby to Stephen de Segrave who built a church and a mansion there. There was also Bretby Castle which was destroyed during the reign of King James I of England to make way for the construction of Bretby Hall.
In 1585, Thomas Stanhope bought the manor house which was known as Bretby Hall and from then on was the home of the Earls of Chesterfield. This house had a formal garden that rivalled the garden of Versailles in the 1640s. Lord Carnarvon sold the property in the 1920s to pay for the Tutankanhem expedition.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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