Tansley

Tansley is a village and civil parish on the southern edge of the Derbyshire Peak District, two miles east of Matlock.

==History== Tansley is recorded in the Domesday Book as Taneslege, and its name comes from the combination of the Old English elements tān and lēah. Lēah has been translated as 'woodland clearing', but the tān element is contested. It may mean 'branch', perhaps used of 'a valley branching off from the main valley'. However, it has also been translated as a masculine Anglo-Saxon personal name, that is otherwise unrecorded. Other suggestions have been 'sprout, shoot', thus translating the name as 'wood or clearing from which shoots were obtained'. Tansley grew during the Industrial Revolution, its main industry being the quarrying of millstone grit (for making mill-stones, now adopted as the symbol of the Peak District National Park). A copious amount of water runs off Tansley moor above the village, eventually running into Bentley Brook, a tributary of the Derwent. Bentley Brook and three of its feeder streams have been dammed in the past to make artificial lakes which provided water to power mills. As well as five mills in Lumsdale Valley there were also three mills in Tansley village, two of which remain having been restored for new uses. Nowadays the surviving lakes are stocked with fish for angling. The water also led to the establishment of Tansley Hydro (later Tansley House residential adult care home, now closed) when spas and hydrotherapy were in fashion and Victorian tourists came to the Matlock area for its Romantic charm. Tansley is now more famous for its many garden centres and plant nurseries, its many small businesses and its large Sunday car-boot market.