Bonsall, Derbyshire

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Bonsall
Bonsall village.
Bonsall shown within Derbyshire
OS grid reference	SK279582
District	Derbyshire Dales
Shire county	Derbyshire
Region	East Midlands
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	MATLOCK
Postcode district	DE4
Police	Derbyshire
Fire	Derbyshire
Ambulance	East Midlands
European Parliament	East Midlands
List of places: UK • England • Derbyshire

Coordinates: 53°07′16″N 1°35′02″W / 53.121, -1.584

Bonsall is a village in the Derbyshire Dales on the edge of the Peak District. It is 5 miles from Matlock and 18 miles from Derby. Bonsall has a long history of lead mining, along with its neighbouring town of Wirksworth probably going back to Roman times, and is even mentioned in the Domesday Book.

An aerial photo of Bonsall village taken from a helicopter.

Bonsall inhabitants have been involved in the textile industry, pre- and post-Arkwright. At around 1850, Bonsall was a farming village surrounded by lead mines and busy outworker frame-knitting workshops. Many people also worked in the cotton spinning mills at Cromford and the Via Gellia ^[1]. In early modern times it was on an important salters' route, and was a staging post on the road between Derby and Manchester. Bonsall is still a working village, involved in agriculture, heavy goods transport and a range of forms of information technology. However, most people in the village are forced to travel as far as Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield for work.

The village lies on the Limestone Way, at the head of its branch to Matlock.

For two years after October 2000, there were 19 sightings of UFOs in the area. On October 5, 2000, Sharon Rowlands caught one sighting of a circular object on film. The circular object showed a similarity to a circular object seen on the STS-75 Columbia Space Shuttle mission in early 1996^{[citation needed]}.

Since 2002, the landlord of the Barley Mow pub conducts UFO walks every Bank Holiday, and this has featured on BBC's 'Country File'.