RIDDINGS, a market-town and chapelry in the
parish of ALFRETON, hundred of SCARSDALE, county of
DERBY, 3 miles (S.) from Alfreton, with which the population
is returned. The living is a perpetual curacy,
in the archdeaconry of Derby, and diocese of Lichfield
and Coventry, and in the patronage of W. P. Morewood,
Esq. The chapel having long been demolished, a new
one is now being erected in the early English style, for
the completion of which, £1000 has been subscribed,
and the remaining expense is to be defrayed by the
commissioners, appointed under the late act, for promoting
the building of additional churches and chapels.
There, are places of worship for Baptists, Independents,
and Wesleyan Methodists. The new line of road from
Manchester to Nottingham, and a branch of the Cromford
canal, connected with Mansfield by a rail-road,,
pass through this place, which has recently obtained the
grant of a market: there are extensive iron-works,
and furnaces for smelting iron-ore, immense quantities
of which and of coal are obtained in the immediate
neighbourhood, and give employment to a large proportion
of the inhabitants, of whom some are also employed
in the adjacent mines, forges, &c., of Birch-wood
and Codnor Park. These establishments, formed about
1801, have been the cause of greatly increasing the
population of Riddings, which, prior to that period, was
but small; although in early ages it was a place of considerable
consequence.