Northwood and Tinkersley is directly adjacent to the Peak District national park to the west, and shares a border with the parishes of Darley Dale, Rowsley and Stanton.

Northwood and Tinkersley is adjacent to the Peak District National Park, the parish resting alongside its south eastern edge.

Being alongside the Peak District National Park, the composition of the parish is broadly similar, with limestone, and gritstone featuring in the geology of the wider area.

[8] Neither Northwood or Tinkersley were recorded as standalone settlements at the time of Domesday in 1086 AD, these areas then being a part of the extensive ancient parish of Darley,[9] which along with surrounding locations, were all lands owned by William the Conqueror.

In 1791 Herbert Greensmith, a lead merchant from Wirksworth then living at Stancliffe Hall, realigned Whitworth Road to go around the eastern edge of his park and on to Northwood, removing two farm houses and their buildings to create the new route.

[14] As later ownership became fragmented, vicar and rector William Wray from 1766 began a programme of consolidating the then scattered glebes by trading plots with other landowners, which by this time included Tinkersley.

In 1823 the new owner Arthur Heathcote-Heathcote helped to extend it to Rowsley once the land had been drained, however it flooded regularly until the Derwent was dammed near its source in the early 20th century.

With these proving inadequate because of the ever increasing traffic, and the resulting congestion, the Midland Railway obtained additional land in the early 1870s to the south, adjacent to Tinkersley, and built a substantial sidings area, which opened in 1877.

The cafe at the station however is still named after Northwood village, while other features of interest included the Derbyshire Dales Narrow Gauge Railway.

The location to the east of the southern sidings was given to the war effort in the early 1940s, with a factory built to manufacture metal components for industry, in use to the present day.

A number of residences and farms provide holiday accommodation and bed & breakfast facilities, catering to many Peak District visitors.

[33] The Eastern Peak District Moors is an extensive Site of Special Scientific Interest, the southernmost area covers the portion of Fallinge Edge that is within the parish.

The location reuses the former Rowley sidings and coal marshalling yard of the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midlands Junction Railway and eventual British Rail company which was closed in 1968, and reopened in 1997 for heritage purposes.