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An arresting picture is the church as we see it from the highroad in a green dip of the countryside, beautiful in its trim churchyard. A huge elm that once topped the tower crashed down in 1959, damaging part of the fabric of the church.
The church comes mainly from a rebuilding of the 14th century. About 50 years older than the rest is the beautiful chancel, with buttresses crowned with crocketed pinnacles, and a priest’s doorway with ballflowers. The tower has a spire with dormer windows, and the cross-bow loopholes, rare in a church, suggest that the tower was for defence. The little room over the porch has two peepholes for vanished altars, once at the end of the aisles.
To the west of the church, and reached by a switchback lane, is a great stone gatehouse of about 1500, all that is left of a proud castle which was long the home of the Mackworths and is said to have been destroyed in the Civil War.
The old home of the Mundys, the 18th century Markeaton Hall, has been demolished, but the fine park belongs to the people of Derby.
On a hill above the park are the distinctive buildings of the Derby and District Colleges of Art and Technology. First opened in 1959 and extended in 1966, they are reputed to be the finest example of modern architecture in the country.
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