STAVELEY, a parish in the hundred of SCARSDALE, county of DERBY, 4 miles (N. E. by E.) from Chesterfield, containing, with the chapelry of Barlow, 2759 inhabitants. The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry of Derby, and diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, rated in the king's books at £ 12. 7. 6., and in the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, contains several monuments of the Frecheville family, and the east window exhibits some stained glass presented by Lord Frecheville in 1676. The river Rother runs through the parish j and the Chesterfield canal, and several rail-roads, pass between it and the neighbouring collieries. A considerable quantity of iron-stone, obtained here, is smelted near the village, where are two blast furnaces. A free grammar school was founded at Netherthorp, in 1537, by Judge Rodes, in support of which and of two scholarships in St. John's College, Cambridge, he bequeathed £20 per annum. A new house was erected by subscription, in 1804, for the master, whose annual income, including the bequests of Margaret Frecheville, in 1599, Lord James Cavendish, in 1742, and the Rev. Francis Gisborne, in 1796, is about £30 a year. There are also some smaller donations for the education of girls. An hospital for four aged persons of each sex was erected at Woodthorpe, in 1632, by Sir Peter Frecheville, who endowed it with £4 per annum to each of the inmates; but Richard Robinson, in 1777, having augmented the original endowment with a donation of £ 18 per annum, the allowances have been since doubled. StaveJey was for many generations the chief seat of the Frechevilks.- S T A 171 ST E In the reign of Charles I., Sir John Frecheville, an active royalist, strongly fortified his house here with twelve pieces of cannon, but capitulated in August 1644.