Village History
“The History of Staunton Harold and the Ferris family name” says: The [Saxon] Sewalus family, which also owned land in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, took the name ‘Shirley’ in around 1240. The Shirleys retained some good Saxon names such as Sewalus, Fulcher, Matilda, Ralph and Eldred. They were a proud, notable family but had done nothing to gain great acclaim, although their knights later won distinctions in the Crusades, taking the Saracen's Head as the family Coat of Arms. A later Ralph Shirley was created a Banneret in 1487, during the Battle of East Stoke. Another Shirley became the first colonial governor of Virginia in the early 1600s, while yet another was governor of Massachusetts from 1741.

Village History (cont’d.)
Pigot and Co's Commercial Directory for Derbyshire of 1835 contains this text on Shirley:
"SHIRLEY, with the townships of STYDD and YEAVELEY, forming a parish, in the same hundred as Brailsford, is about 3 miles W. from that village, 9 N.W. from Derby, and 5 S. by E. from Ashbourn (sic). The habitations are so scattered over the parish, that the features of a village are not to be recognised. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is a small building, with a tower of wood. Shirley park, in this parish, occupies up wards of two hundred acres, and at one time was a noted cover for foxes. Part of the old manor house of the Shirleys, who settled here in the reign of Henry II, still exists attached to a farm house. The parish contained, at the last census, 602 inhabitants."