The town of Dronfield comprises three communities of Dronfield, Dronfield Woodhouse and Coal Aston. It is delightfully situated, completely encircled by 'Green Belt', and nestling in the eastern foothills of the Pennines only three miles from the Peak District National Park. The finest beauty spots of Derbyshire are within easy travelling distance.
In the valley of the River Drone, Dronfield grew into a town and had a market until modern transport gave it easy access to Chesterfield and Sheffield, between which it comes midway, and to both of which it is now almost joined by continous ranks of housing, collieries, iron foundries, and steel works have given it a workaday dress. Some fine 18th century houses remain, and with it all its stir of spades and shovels, tools for the workshop and sickles for the field - it has not fogotten how to treasure the old church on the hill.
A beautiful building without and within, it has been the glory of Dronfield for over 600 years. In its churchyard is the shaft of the old preaching cross. The fine tower and spire,138 feet high is of the 15th century, though the spire was much restored after a storm. The nave arcades, 600 years old, were crowned with a clerestory a century after. The joy of the church is the lovely 14th century chancel, one of the finest in the county, long and lofty and light, with traceried windows, and a carved band of wavy moulding below the parapet. In the chancel windows is ancient glass through which the light has been falling 600 years. There are coat-of-arms,and three roundels with quaint figures playing musical instruments.
A man is sitting with an ancient guitar, a monk has a clavichord, and another is playing a primitive kind of fiddle. Splendid woodwork old and new adds to the charm of the church. Worked into the choir stalls are bench ends and poppy-heads 500 years old. There is a Jacobean pulpit handsomely carved, and a fine old chest with some seven locks. The old font was found in a vicarage garden. Among the beautiful silver is a paten of about 1350. There is a little sanctus bell, and among other survivals is a chained book. On an alabaster tomb adorned with angels lies Sir Richard Barley in armour, his hands in prayer but his dagger by his side. He lived at Dronfield Woodhouse some 500 years ago.
Set in a stone against the chancel wall are brasses of John Fanshawe with his wife and four children, and another of a woman and a child. They lived at Fanshawe Gate three or four miles away; a barn and a dovecot all that remains of their old home, and they are remembered in Dronfield as the founders of the grammar school in the time of Elizabeth I. On the chancel floor are fine brass portraits of two 14th century priests who were brothers, Thomas and Richard Gomfrey, said to be the only known example of a brass engraved in memory of two brothers.
Note the Peel monument on the site of the former cross and stocks, and which stands as a tribute to Sir Robert Peel's efforts in repealing the Corn Law in 1846.
