DERBY CANAL, a canal in Derbyshire. It commences, at a railway to coal and lead mines, in Little Eaton chapelry, 3½ miles N of Derby; goes 8½ miles southward, past Derby, Alvaston, and Chellaston, to the Trent and Mersey canal at Swarkestone; and sends off a branch from Derby, eastward to the Erewash canal, near Sandiacre. It makes a descent of 29 feet, with 12 locks. It was formed in 1793-4.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))