Bentley appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, entered under the hundred of Appletree in Derbyshire.

Other Settlements in Appletree

The Meaning of the Name

The name Bentley is of Anglo-Saxon origin. Its final element derives from the Old English word lēah, a woodland clearing or glade. The first element is most likely a personal name or an early descriptive term, now difficult to recover with certainty. Taken together the name probably meant something close to ‘a clearing’.

Remarkably, the name has changed little since 1086, when the Domesday scribes wrote it as Bentley.

Listed Buildings Near Bentley

Historic England records 8 listed buildings within about a mile of Bentley. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*

Bentley Hall - 0.39 km

Grade II

Bentley Fields Farmhouse and Attached Outbuilding - 0.56 km
Pump Opposite the School House - 1.07 km
Village Pump - 1.09 km
The School House and Garden Wall - 1.09 km
Church of St John - 1.12 km
1, 2, 2A, 3, 4, 5, the Row - 1.17 km
The Old Rectory - 1.28 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Bentley

Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Bentley:

Medieval settlement, including open field system, immediately west of Bentley Fields Farm - 0.31 km
Cubley Hall moated site - 1.39 km

Bentley Today

Today Bentley lies within the administrative area of Derbyshire Dales, and the settlement recorded a population of 69 at the 2021 census. Nine and a half centuries separate that figure from the small rural community the Domesday survey recorded here in 1086.

Read more about modern Hungry Bentley on Wikipedia .