Newton Solney is a small village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

South Derbyshire South Derbyshire is a local government district in Derbyshire, England. The population of the local authority at the 2011 Census was 94,611. It contains a third of the National Forest, and the council offices are in Swadlincote. The district ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, located about two miles (3 km) from the

East Staffordshire East Staffordshire is a local government district with borough status in Staffordshire in England. It has two main towns: Burton upon Trent and Uttoxeter. Villages in the area include Abbots Bromley, Stretton, Tutbury, Barton-under-Needwood ...

border, near to

Burton upon Trent Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. In 2011, it had a population of 72,299. The ...

. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 659. Its nearest neighbour is

Repton Repton is a village and civil parish in the South Derbyshire district of Derbyshire, England, located on the edge of the River Trent floodplain, about north of Swadlincote. The population taken at the 2001 Census was 2,707, increasing to 2,8 ...

, situated about two miles (3 km) to the northeast.

History

When the Anglian invaders came up the Trent in the sixth century, they would have found Newton Solney a very attractive place, sitting at the confluence of two rivers, the Trent, which could be forded here and the

Dove Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

. They called it ''Niwantune'' meaning the new farm and from this tiny nucleus, the village slowly grew. When the Vikings, in their turn, raided

Mercia la, Merciorum regnum , conventional_long_name=Kingdom of Mercia , common_name=Mercia , status=Kingdom , status_text=Independent kingdom (527–879)Client state of Wessex () , life_span=527–918 , era=Heptarchy , event_start= , date_start= , y ...

and destroyed the Saxon monastery at

(873-4) they may also have sacked and occupied Newton Solney. This manor was in the ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

'' in 1086. Under the title of "The land of the

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...

(in Derbyshire)" it said:

In Newton Solney and
Bretby Bretby is a village and civil parish in the south of Derbyshire, England, north of Swadlincote and east of Burton upon Trent, on the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 893. ...
Ælfgar had seven
carucates The carucate or carrucate ( lat-med, carrūcāta or ) was a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names and fell under different forms ...
of land to the
geld Geld may refer to: * Gelding, equine castration * Danegeld Danegeld (; "Danish tax", literally "Dane yield" or tribute) was a tax raised to pay tribute or protection money to the Viking raiders to save a land from being ravaged. It was call ...
. There is land for six ploughs. There the king has one plough and nineteen villans and one
bordar Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which dev ...
with five ploughs. There are of meadow, woodland pasture two leagues long and three furlongs broad. TRETRE in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
is Tempore Regis Edwardi. This means in the time of King Edward before the
Battle of Hastings The Battle of Hastings nrf, Batâle dé Hastings was fought on 14 October 1066 between the Norman-French army of William, the Duke of Normandy, and an English army under the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson, beginning the Norman Conque ...
. as now worth one hundred shillings.''Domesday Book: A Complete Translation''. London: Penguin, 2003. p.742

The village was passed over to

Norman de Solney Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Nor ...

some time after 1086. In 1205 Alured de Solennaia, a Norman knight, inherited Newton. By about 1300 it became known as Newton Solney. Norman knights were passionately fond of hunting and the de Solneys carved a hunting park out of the extensive woodland. The first church was built in the twelfth century. There would also have been a manor house, probably somewhere near the present Newton Park Hotel. The lord of the manor would have had a mill and fishing rights on the river and a tithe barn is recorded in 1528. With the death of John, the last male de Solney in 1390, the manor passed through several important local families and was finally bought by a local attorney, Abraham Hoskins who built the house, now the hotel.

Modern development

The village slowly grew to a population of 181 in 1801 and now has about 800, the increase mainly resulting from a new housing development off Blacksmith's Lane. In 1894, part of the parish of

Winshill Winshill is an area to the east of the town of Burton upon Trent, in the borough of East Staffordshire, England. Flanked to the north and east by the South Derbyshire border, historically the parish of Winshill had always been part of Derbyshir ...

was added to Newton Solney. Local landowners the Every family rebuilt the former Rock Tower on Church Lane as Rock House, a Victorian villa overlooking the river Trent. The Main Road was declared a conservation area in 1978. The village has a school, two pubs and a hotel. The Village Hall was built in 1932 to the designs of the architect Arthur Eaton and Son.

References

External links

DerbyPhotos.co.uk
{{authority control Villages in Derbyshire South Derbyshire District

History

Modern development

See also

References

External links