Sheldon is located close to Magpie Mine and subsequently expanded due to lead mining. Also according to the census in 1861 Cornish miners migrated to Sheldon increasing the population by twenty five per cent.

It was listed in Domesday as Scelhadun and Schelehaddon in 1230. The name is derived from the Middle English schele, ‘shed, hut’, and haddon, ‘belonging to’ or ‘of’ – presumably referring to an outlying or dependent settlement.

Sheldon parish church is dedicated to Saint Michael and All Angels. Some sources give the dedication as just “All Angels” and many sources refer to the church as just a chapel. The present church, which seats 140, was built in 1864 near the site of the old chapel. The burial ground is to the east.
Sheldon was at one time a chapelry of Bakewell, but the partly Norman chapel was demolished in 1865. The present building has an unusual rounded east wall and attractive roof timbers. Church records show that in 1753 a 14-year old boy and an 80-year old disabled widow were married in the parish of Sheldon.

A Memorial Stone telling a sad tale can be found in Sheldon churchyard, the stone reads –

IN MEMORY OF
EPHRAIM BROCKLEHURST
WHO WAS KILLED
AT THE MAGPIE MINE
JANUARY 20TH 1860
AGED 25 YEARS
THERE IS BUT ONE STEP BETWEEN ME AND DEATH

from the inscription he presumably fell down the mine shaft to his death.

The Sheldon Duck story is a little known Derbyshire legend from 1601 when a duck was seen entering an ash tree and disappeared.
Over the years the tree became known as the ‘Duck Tree’ and in the early 1900s it became partially decayed at the bottom so it was cut down. A local joiner had purchased the tree to cut into boards and find a strange duck-shaped impression on the wood inside.
The boards were displayed for a time at Ashford-on-the-Water Post Office but later incorporated into a mantelpiece by the timber merchant who felled the tree.

A photographic print at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery shows the alleged duck and this is the transcript of the text –

A Sheldon tradition, now nearly 300 years old is verified from Ashford-in-the-Water, as to a duck having been seen flying towards an ash tree in that village, which it entered, and from that moment mysteriously disappeared. Sheldon is a small hamlet lying to the west of Bakewell and is noted for nothing in particular but the magnificent country which surrounds it, and the difficulty of getting supplies up there in during the long dreary winter.

The duck went into the tree in the year 1601, and the tale handed down from one generation to another from that day to this. The tree was always known as “the duck tree” and stood near the residence of Mr. Harry Buxton, overhanging the road. It having become partially decayed at the bottom, it was resolved to cut it down, Messrs. Wilson & Son, joiners, of Ashford, becoming the purchasers.

The tree was taken from Sheldon to Ashford and operated upon. The lower portion was thrown aside as being to a great extent useless, but lately it was resolved to cut it up. Two boards taken from the centre gave unmistakable evidence of the genuineness of the Sheldon tradition about the lost duck. On one side of each of these boards, about an inch in thickness, was the perfect form of a full-sized duck. The body measures eight inches across, and the length from tail to beak is twenty-one inches. The neck is five inches long. There are holes in both boards at the point where the duck’s brains would rest, as if these agencies rotted the timber. This also occurs where the lights and liver settled. The duck appears to have gone head-foremost into a hole which was known to be in the tree, and couldn’t get out again. In the course of time the parts became united and thus there was an end of the duck. An indelible impression of its full form was, however, left in that extraordinary prison where the duck was confined. Mr Samuel Ashton of Ashford, Bakewell, Derbyshire, is now in possession of the two boards.

Credit to Derbyshire County Council: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.

This story first appeared on the Buxton Museum blog under Curiosity of the month in 8th Jan 2016.