William Dronfield (1820 - ) William Dronfield was born in Staveley, Chesterfield in 1820. He was the son of John Dronfield and his wife Sarah (née Davison) who had married in Chesterfield in 1801. William and his descendents (those whose lineage we are following) remained in the locality of Staveley for the next hundred years or so, presumably because of the employment offered by the burgeoning iron and coal industry nearby. Staveley, a village, a township, and a parish in Derbyshire. The village stands near the M.R. and the M.S. & L.R., and the valley of the Rother, 4 miles NE of Chesterfield, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Chesterfield, and three railway stations. The township comprises Barrow Hill, Handley, Inkersall, Mastin Moor, Netherthorpe, Norbriggs, Woodthorpe, and Poolsbrook. Acreage, 6872, of which 53 are water; population, 9363. There is a parish council consisting of fifteen members. The manor belongs to the Duke of Devonshire. Ringwood Hall is the seat of the Barrow family. There are coal and iron works, manufactories of spades and shovels, a brush factory, and corn mills. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Southwell; gross value, £996 with residence. Patron, the Duke of Devonshire. The church was enlarged in 1864, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, and western tower. A chapel of ease is at Handley; an endowed hospital, with a chapel, is at Woodthorpe; and Free, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels, an endowed school, a mechanics' institute and reading-room, a cemetery, and a large and commodious village hall erected in 1895 to the memory of Mr Charles Markham, for many years manager of the Staveley Coal and Iron Works. Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5