Stand at the entrance to the Chatsworth Farm Shop and you can see the whole of Pilsley laid out below you: a neat grid of gritstone cottages, all built from the same ginger-veined Ashover Grit, with woodwork painted the same estate blue. Nearly every house belongs to the Chatsworth estate, and many of them still house people who work on it. This is a village that was planned, and it shows.
The Farm Shop itself is the reason most people come. It opened in 1977 in the estate's former shire-horse stables and has kept growing ever since. The butchery counter sells beef, lamb, venison and pheasant reared on the estate; the deli carries 104 different cheeses, alongside pies, quiches and patés, and jars of Morello cherry and brandy jam, three-fruits curd and spiced mango chutney. Most of what's on the shelves is made or grown within thirty miles. A 90-seat café was added in 2004, doing breakfast, brunch and lunch with a long view over the countryside. It has won its share of awards, including Best in the Midlands at the Farm Shop & Deli Show in 2022.
The pub is the Pilsley Inn, until recently the Devonshire Arms, and it's part of the same Chatsworth family — thirteen bedrooms, real fires in winter, and a kitchen that leans heavily on the estate and the Farm Shop for its ingredients. The menu is ambitious for a village pub. Sourdough baked in-house with whipped butter; salt-cured salmon with wasabi purée and dill; ham hock terrine; Derbyshire beef with pickled onion and horseradish; guinea fowl with sweet potato, cabbage and blood orange; a passionfruit lemon tart to finish. One reviewer's tab for three courses each, two coffees, wine and a soft drink came to £98. A local write-up called it "a quintessentially English village pub, expect charm by the bucket load."
The bar pours Peak Ales, brewed on the Chatsworth estate, and Thornbridge from Bakewell down the road. Dogs are welcome in the bar, with water bowls. The car park has two EV chargers and a Tesla point, which is more than most villages this size manage.
Pilsley has no church of its own. Services were historically held in the schoolhouse, and the old chapel is now the village hall. The parish church is St Peter's in Edensor, less than a mile away, where most of the Dukes of Devonshire are buried — and, more improbably, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, sister of JFK. President Kennedy visited her grave on 29 June 1963, laying Irish flowers.
The village exists because the 6th Duke of Devonshire didn't like looking at old Edensor from his house. Between 1838 and 1842 he had it dismantled and rebuilt out of sight over the hill, and the displaced residents were rehoused here. Joseph Paxton oversaw the work and designed the primary school, which opened in 1849 and still sits at the heart of things.
From the Farm Shop it's a two-mile field walk to Edensor and on to Chatsworth. The primary school lets out, and the children walk home past the blue doors.
