The Abbey pub on Darley Street opened October 5th 1979, formally the bakehouse or brewery for the monastery, and has served as cottages and shops in its time. It still has a spiral stone staircase, beehive bread oven and apparently, some ghostly visitations. Years ago Darley Street was just known as The Street

Long mill was built between 1782 and 1789, In 1788 a fire destroyed the building and was rebuilt in 1789 and the exposed wooden structural members inside the mill were protected against fire by metal sheathing this is probably the earliest surviving example of fire-proofing in a textile mill. The other two mills joined to this are the west and east mill built between 1819 and 1821. In 1819 more than £3,000 was spent on the east mill and nearly £4,700 on the west mill. The building works continued into 1821 when a new waterwheel was purchased during the year at a cost of £1,750. The west mill is of particular interest. It is an L-shaped extension projecting from the middle five bays of the long mill. The whole of this mill complex is a listed grade II building.

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The grade II listed gatehouse above centre is an octagonal building which stands at the entrance to the mill yard.

This gatehouse has for so long served as a tollhouse that it has become wrongly known as the toll house.

Below are views of the small wooden bridge leading to the Mills.

There were five houses built within the mill yard which were built at different times as the mill expanded, These were occupied by foremen at the mill or at the adjoining bleaching and dye works. The houses reflect the status of their occupiers, being larger than most of the other houses in the settlement. You can see in the house opposite the join down the centre and also around on the side where it has been altered in the past.

The settlement the Evans created in Darley Abbey has survived almost completely intact. Many of the houses have been altered externally and internally, for the most part superficially, and the privies and pigsties have gone. But few significant buildings other than the two Evans houses, Darley House and Darley Hall, the Evans farm and the paper mill, have been demolished.

Left and below are a single stepped three storey terrace of 13 houses built on Mile Ash Lane, built in 1795-96, each house in the terrace was provided with a lavatory and a pigsty together with a plot of land to the rear. Shortly after the terrace was built the Evans constructed the new road in front of the terrace which linked the mill community to the turnpike (now the A6), at Mile Ash. This terrace block is a grade II listed building. The picture below right is looking down Mile Ash Lane from the top near to the A6.

The picture on the right shows a row of five, three-storey, brick and slate houses on Poplar Row which  originally included a schoolroom at the end. They occupy the level ground at the bottom of New Road. They are thought to be the houses built by the Evans between 1800 and 1802 referred to in the company ledger as “five houses and a school room”. these are grade II listed.

Brick Row above, which was often referred to the Causeway or Causey, consists of a row of fourteen, three-storey houses, an interesting feature of the row is that some of the top storeys are not part of the same house as those below. The Evans needed flexibility in their housing provision and spreading the attics of some houses across adjoining houses offered an opportunity to provide additional space for larger families.

Allotments for each house were provided on the other side of the road.

The house at the northern end of the row was adapted to give it the appearance of a lodge for Darley House whose main drive was opposite.  The whole row is now a grade II listed building

Various buildings around the village, above are two views of a cottage with an eye brow roof above the windows and below right is the home of the British Legion, this is on Darley Street just past the Abbey public house. The old stone building on Abbey Lane which adjoins the shop and is shown below left is one of the few buildings in the village that remain from the Monastery estate and is very similar to the Abbey pub, (which gets all the attention) but this building is somewhat overlooked in the history of the village. Behind the brick front of the shop is possibly another very old stone building, the basement contained old ovens and was used as a bakery in early part of the 20th century when Abbey Lane was known locally as Shop Row or Shop Road. These buildings could quite possibly have been the Gatehouse or a walled entrance to the Monastery

In the 1970's No 9 Abbey Lane was restored.

The late Mr. Baskerville purchased and fully restored this ancient village property that was originally Nos. 7-9 Abbey Lane. He discovered many interesting features like an ingle-nook fireplace that was revealed after the removal of a Victorian range. Also, outside features of an arched doorway and a 30-foot well. A plaque was placed on the street wall that state '15th century' but it is thought that the foundations actually dated from the 12th century. Mr. Baskerville also beautifully restored the garden with plants, herb beds and fruit trees. after his death in 1980's the property was sold separately from the garden on which another house was built.

This information is further evidence of the importance of these two buildings

The two pictures below show the school house which was built in 1826 this had accommodation for the house master and mistress at each end.  There's a clock and plain wrought iron railings enclose a small playground at either end. It was endowed by Walter Evans who left £8,000 in his will to be invested for teaching the poor children in the parish who were aged four to twelve “and not more than 40 at a time”.  The building is now in use as offices and is a grade II listed building.

On the left is a group of two blocks on Upper New Road these are built in the cluster house format and comprise of eight houses in all. The blocks are brick-built with slate roofs and the elevations have been given an unusual elegance for mill workers’ housing, the doors being set in blank arched recesses. The road-side elevations have been rendered and painted but the original brickwork is evident at the rear. The houses to the rear have allotment gardens.

No evidence remains of ancillary buildings to house privies or pigsties, though there is ample space for there to have been such facilities. The care with which these blocks have been designed is thought to be attributable to their high visibility from the Evans residence.

On the right is Lavender Row and Four Houses. The brick built houses on the left of the picture are Lavender Hill and these are grade II listed, these houses show the greatest impression of quality in construction and design. These are three storeys and built in brick and slate. Architectural distinction is provided by the lintels over the windows and doors having projecting keystones. Each house had a lavatory and a plot of land to the rear.

Four Houses are on the right, these were built of brick and slate in the cluster house form and also are three storey. They were completed in 1792, an early experiment with the cluster house format, later to be adopted by William Strutt in Belper. Unlike the Belper cluster houses they do not have private gardens or pigsties, though they were provided with “necessaries” (lavatories) in 1796. They each had an allotment on land behind the houses on Mile Ash Lane.

An old barn on the left but the roof is later than the brick construction, and this building is opposite the Church Hall, on Abbey Yard not sure of it's origins but maybe an old farm?

Amongst the old historic Mill cottages  we come across this relatively modern block of flats on New Road, quite appropriate it being on this road then!

St Matthew’s Church was built by Walter Evans in 1818, and is now a grade C listed building.

The crypt beneath the altar contains the remains of nine members of the Evans family, together with those of Moses Harvey, a junior partner in the cotton mill. The Churchyard has ornate cast iron gates of impressive size; and many of the slate headstones were provided by the Evans for their workers

The Post Office at Darley Abbey on Duffield Road (the main A6), taken in 2003, unfortunately this closed in 2004 leaving the residents of Darley Abbey without a Post Office, this is soon to become a take away fish and chip shop.