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Tissington
This picturesque village of Tissington offers all the exquisite charm and character of the traditional English medieval country manor, being an estate village built around Tissington Hall, the great Jacobean house of the FitzHerbert family. Tissington is approached from the A515 by a wonderful avenue of Lime trees that present a grand entrance to the estate. Tissington Hall has been much altered down the years. In the early 18th century the west front was given a face-lift in the fashionable Palladian style of the early Georgian period and most of the mullions on the east front were replaced by sash windows. At this time the original oak panelling was uncovered and the mullion windows replaced by Arnold Mitchell, who also rebuilt and enlarged the estate administration block on the north side.
The Savage family held the estate until around 1100 and then for almost 400 years it remained divided until Nicholas FitzHerbert of Somersal married Cecily Franceys whose family owned one half of it. Later, in Elizabethan times, his grandson Francis FitzHerbert united the estate once again when he purchased the other half from the Cockaynes. Thus for half of the 1000 years of it's recorded history Tissington has been owned, maintained, and nurtured by the FitzHerbert family.
The unique Derbyshire custom of Well Dressing is said to have begun at Tissington in 1340. There are six wells dressed around the village each year during the Annual Well Dressing Festival which runs for seven days from Ascension Day. A small tinkling stream runs the length of the village street, culverted for most of it's length and surfacing near the Hall Well to run bubbling past St. Mary's church and on down to the village pond beside the old schoolhouse; above the doorway the carved initials of Frances Fitzherbert can be seen, and today the building bears the legend, `Tissington Kindergarten'. Behind the village pond the Old Kitchen Gardens are now the home of Tissington Nursery which provides a rare assortment of unusual plants to the public.
The village relies almost entirely on tourism, for which it caters admirably; and the award winning Old Coach House Tea Rooms opposite the church, along with the Trekking Centre at Tissington Wood Farm and the Candle Workshop at Yew Tree Cottage all bear ample testimony to this. Local enterprise is also evident on the south east fringe of the village at Basset Wood Farm, - a working dairy farm where Janet Carrington provides excellent accommodation, runs a delightful tea room, and has a pet's paddock for children to enjoy.
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