Willersley Castle

The name comes from the old manor of Willersley, which was partitioned from the adjacent manor of Cromford in 1615. The estate was bought by Edwin Lascelles in 1759, and in 1782 the industrialist Sir Richard Arkwright purchased it from Thomas Hallet Hodges for £8,864.

There was no large house on the ground Arkwright acquired — only a few farms and Derwent House, which still stands off the main drive. The farm buildings were later converted to residences and sold out of the estate. Arkwright planted many trees, having first paid £3,000 to clear away a large limestone rock.

Originally named Willersley Hall, the castellated house was built for Arkwright's occupation by the architect William Thomas, on the slopes of Wild Cat Tor some 400 feet above sea level. In 1791, with the building approaching completion, fire broke out and severely damaged part of the interior. The damage was made good, but Arkwright died in 1792 before the house was finished. Thomas Gardner completed the repairs that same year.

Richard Arkwright junior moved in with his family in 1796, and his son Peter inherited the estate in 1843. During the early 1800s, visitors to the spa at nearby Matlock Bath were invited onto the property to tour the gardens and pleasure grounds. St Mary's Church at Cromford was built in 1802 as the family chapel, and was extensively modified decades later when it became a church. Members of the family lived at Willersley until the First World War, during which the house served as a maternity hospital.

Richard Arkwright sold the property in 1927 to Sir Albert Ball, who split up the estate and sold the castle and its grounds to Methodist businessmen; they converted it into a Methodist Guild Holiday Centre. The stables were turned over to residential use at some later date. Between 1940 and 1945 the building again served as a maternity hospital.

It then returned to trade as a Methodist Guild hotel, and later as a Christian Guild hotel. The hotel closed temporarily during the pandemic lockdown of 2020, and in July that year Methodist Guilds Holidays Limited announced it would not reopen; the property was listed for sale. In 2021 Willersley Castle was bought by the residential outdoor education company Manor Adventure, which uses it to accommodate up to 90 school students for outdoor pursuits.

The design of the sixty acres of grounds is attributed to John Webb, a pupil of William Emes. Laid out "in the picturesque style", they are entered on the National Heritage List for England's Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest at Grade II, and count among the key features of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. The house itself is a Grade II* listed building.