| Administrative History | Godfrey Mosley (1863-1945) was born and baptised at Egginton, the son of Rev Rowland and Jane Mosley of Burnaston House. He was educated at Repton School, and graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1886. He was admitted as a solicitor in 1891 and after living in Hampstead, London, returned to Derbyshire in 1892 and joined the Derby solicitors' firm Taylor, Simpson and Taylor, (later Taylor, Simpson and Mosley), which acted for the Calke estate in legal matters. In 1893 Godfrey Mosley was appointed coroner for Repton and Gresley, an appointment he maintained until 1915. He was appointed Under-Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1902, and remained in this office for many years. He visited Canada in 1903. In 1892 he was made a second lieutenant in the Sherwood Foresters Volunteers, and with successive promotions was ultimately appointed Lieutenant Colonel in command of the Fifth Battalion. He saw active service in France in 1914-1915, until illness obliged him to withdraw. On 4 Feb 1918 at Ticknall he married Hilda Ethelfreda Harpur Crewe. There were no children of this marriage. The couple lived successively at The Grange, Quarndon and Willington Grange before moving to Calke Abbey in 1924. By 1930 Godfrey Mosley had retired from the solicitors' firm, (although surviving documents seem to indicate that he remained active in legal matters from his home at Calke), and was appointed a magistrate. In 1931 he was High Sheriff of Derbyshire. Godfrey Mosley died in 1945 in hospital in Newcastle. He was buried at Calke, where there is an inscribed gravestone. A substantial archive of the law firm Taylor Simpson and Mosley (D769) includes many documents from Godfrey Mosley's work. |