DERRY, a parliamentary and municipal borough and manufacturing town, the capital of Derbyshire, in the s. part of the co., in the wide and fertile valley of the Derwent—thence navigable to the Treut—at the junction of the main branches of the Midland railway, 132 m. n.n.w. of London, and 35 m. n.n.e. of Birmingham. The houses are mostly of brick, and the public buildings of stone. The free grammar school is one of the oldest English foundations, reaching to 1162. Here Blackwell, author of the Sacred Classics, was a master, and Flamsteed a pupil. Dr. Darwin, in 1783, founded the philosophical society of D., and wrote most of his works here. D. is well situated for manufacture and trade, being at the s. end of a coal-field, and being connected by canals and railways with a great part of England. It has manufactures of silk, cotton, lace, hosiery, lead, iron, paints, porcelain, jewelry, black marble vases, columns, chimney-pieces, and ornaments of fluor-spar, petrifactions, marble, etc. The staple manufacture is throwing silk, introduced by Mr. Crochet from Italy early in the 18th e.; the silk-mill, with machinery still in use, erected in 1718 by John Lombe, being
the first and largest of the kind in England. Pop. (1871), municipal borough, 49,449; parliamentary borough, 61,381. D. returns two members to parliament. In 1867, a new cattle-market, on a. very complete scale, was opened, and also a new corn-exchange. The grammar-school was removed in 1862 from St. Peter's church-yard to St. Helen's house, the site of the original foundation; and a large handsome market-hall was com pleted in 1866. In 1867, M. '1'. Bass, for nearly forty years one of the members of parliament for D., presented the town with six acres of recreation ground; and a new wing was added to the general infirmary. D. was the Roman station Dementia which stood on the c. bank of the river, opposite the town. Roman brass, silver, and gold coins have been found, a Roman pavement, and the foundations of a Roman bridge.
Northworthige by the Saxons, and Deoraby by the Danes—was given by the conqueror to William Peverill.