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Though Derby appears to be creeping ever nearer, Findern still remains a quiet old place, gathered round a shady green on a little hilltop. It has a charming tale, belonging to the Crusades and the Findernes, who were here some 200 years. Sir Geoffrey fought in the Holy Land, and when he came home he brought a narcissus to plant in his garden. The flower took root and flourished.
It saw the great days of the Findernes and said goodbye to the last of the line when Jane Finderne married Judge Harpur and went to Swarkestone. When the last traces of the old home had gone the narcissus went on blooming, growing wild as the garden became a field, until it seemed, as the villagers believed ,that it would never die. It found its way into the gardens of the cottages and vicarage, and it saw the rebuilding of the Norman church before a careless hand uprooted it from the soil.
No stone is left of the old home of the Findernes, and for long there were no monuments to be seen in the church. Today there is only memory, but in the church an alabaster floorstone has quite recently come to light bearing traces of shields in memory of Isabella Finderne of more than 500 years ago.
All that is left of the Norman church, rebuilt in 1863, is a tympanum crudely carved with a cross, a pattern of squares and little figures like Dutch dolls. One of the church's great treasures is an exquisitely engraved chalice of beaten silver, it is of 1564 and among the oldest in Derbyshire.
It was at Findern that Jedediah Strutt, the inventor of the ribbed-stocking frame, served a seven-year's apprenticeship with a wheelwright, and no doubt learned much about hosiery from the family with whom he lodged.
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