The village lies at the southern end of the Limestone Way trail and has a public house, church and school.

The village can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times in documentation and it features in the Domesday Book, where it is listed as Edelachestone and Elachestone.

[2] The Ellastone Parish Register (1907) records the variant spellings, to be found in early medieval manuscripts, as: "Edelachestone, Elachestone, Ethelaxton, Ethelaston, Adlaxton, Athelaxton, Adelachestone, Adalacheston, Edelestone."

During World War II, the bridge over the River Dove was an important crossing point, guarded by two pill-boxes, one on each bank.

It earned this recognition because the author's father spent the early part of his life in the village working as a carpenter...

[5] However the reality of the conversion of Hetty (a character in Adam Bede) is suspect in the light of early Primitive Methodist histories.

Until demolition in 1935 there was a Wootton Hall built by Inigo Jones circa 1730, and formerly visited by the fleeing French political philosopher Rousseau.