DUFFIELD, a parish in the hundred of APPLETREE, county of DERBY, 4 miles (N.) from Derby, comprising the chapelries of Belper,Heage, Holbrook, and Turnditch, and the townships of Hazlewood, Shottle with Postern, and Windley, and containing 13,896 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage in the archdeaconry of Derby, and diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, rated in the king's books at £8.4., endowed with £400 private benefaction, £400 royal bounty, and £300 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. The church is dedicated to St, Alkmund. There are places of worship for General Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists, and Unitarians. In Domesday-book it is called Dunelle, and is described as having " a church, a priest, and two mills;" it. afterwards formed part of the demesne of Henry de Ferrars, who, in 1096, possessed a castle on an eminence north-west of the village, the site of which is now called Castle-Orchard. This fortress was held by several of the turbulent descendants of that powerful baron, of whom William, for rebellion in the reign of Henry II., lost his estates by confiscation, but, in 1199, they were restored by King John to his son William, with the title of Earl of Derby. Earl Robert joined in Simon de Montford's rebellion, and garrisoned his casfcle of Duffield against Henry III., but was defeated and taken prisoner at Chesterfield, by Henry de Almaine, upon which -the king sent his son, afterwards Edward I., into the county of Derby, to ravage with fire and sword the lands of the earl, and take revenge for his disloyalty, and under that order the castle was dismantled, and the demesne fell to the crown. In 1330, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, claimed seven parks in Duffield Frith, and, in the reign of Elizabeth, frequent mention is made of the extent and importance of the royal possessions at Duffield, the appointments of stewards, rangers, and various other officers, and of great leets, and three weeks courts held there, it being- then a portion of the duchy of Lancaster, and so it continued till the reign of Charles I., when it was granted to several persons. The village, pleasantly situated on a fine plain, through which flows the river Derwent, contains many good hoxxses, and is very respectable. There are cattle fairs on the Thursday following New Year's day, and on March 1st. William Gilbert, in the 7th of Elizabeth, surrendered a cottage and lands for the maintenance of a school, towards which Joseph Webster, in 1685, bequeathed an annuity of £10; the annual income of the schoolmaster is £124.. 9. 10., with a house and garden; twenty-four children are odur cated upon this foundation. An almshouse was built by Mr. Anthony Bradshaw, who died in I6l4 it is endowed with a rent:charge upon-an estate at Holbrook, and with £ 100, the gift of William Potterell, in 1735 5 the inmates are two old men and two old women, who haveeach two apartments, with allowances of Is, per week, and 5s. a year fw fuel. There were formerly other almshouses, erected in 1676, but they were taken down in 1810.