Most of it became the ancient parish of Duffield, which contained the townships of Hazlewood, Holbrook, Makeney and Milford, Shottle, and Windley, and the chapelries of Belper, Heage and Turnditch.
Henry de Ferrers had been granted vast tracts of land, in present-day Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, and Essex and as far south as Wiltshire.
In 1070 Hugh d'Avranches was promoted to become Earl of Chester and the Wapentake of Appletree, which covered a large part of south Derbyshire, was passed to de Ferrers.
His major landholdings, however, were those of the Anglo-Saxon Siward Barn,[2] following a revolt in 1071, including more land in Berkshire and Essex and also Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
Remembering that large areas of the county were laid to waste during the so-called Harrying of the North, and are recorded as such in the Domesday Survey, Pilsbury Castle, on the west bank of the River Dove, was probably built to protect his holdings in the wapentake of Hamston.
In 1266, after a rebellion by Robert de Ferrars, against King Henry III the lands were confiscated and passed to Prince Edmund to be part of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Records for Duffield Frith do not begin until this time, and being part of the Duchy, the area was not properly a royal forest until the reign of Henry IV.
Within these were a number of enclosed parks for the keeping of buck and doe (in contrast with the much larger ward of Campana in the Forest of High Peak which was intended for hart and hind.)
There were seven of these parks within the Frith, listed by Henry Earl of Lancaster) in 1330 as : Ravensdale, Mansell, Schethull (Shottle), Postern, Bureper (Belper), Morley, and Schymynde-cliffe, (Shining Cliff).
A shift had occurred from arable farming to livestock production and it was more profitable to rent the forest for grazing, without protecting the growing shoots of young trees.
It reported that the game had virtually disappeared and much of the area was held in common by tenants and copyholders who would suffer if the woods were enclosed.
A paper by Derbyshire County Council has suggested: The area of Duffield Frith is one within which, as noted above, there is good surviving evidence of medieval settlements and field systems.