Little happens to Boylestone now, for it is a quiet place, yet it had its hour of drama long ago.
Here came a little company of Cromwell's men in the night, dismounting from their horses and silently surrounding the church that stands so high above the sunken lane. They waited for the peep of dawn to call upon the enemy to surrender. Indoors were 200 Cavaliers sheltering for the night on their way to the relief of Wingfield Manor. They had kept no watch outside the church and so were caught in a trap of their own setting. One by one as they came through the priest's doorway they were taken and stripped of their arms, "men,colours, and all, without the loss of one man on either side".
An avenue of stately limes has grown along the way the soldiers must have trod, bringing us to the church whose tower with odd peaked roof is little more than a century old. The oldest stones of the church are in the 13th century buttresses of the chancel, the rest of it having been made new in the 14th century, perhaps by Walter de Waldeshef who was chief butler to the king, and Governor of the Castle and Honour of the Peak; but the east window is a century later, and some of the windows are new, as is the chancel arch. The font is 600 years old. Here still is the priest's doorway through which the Cavaliers walked out to meet their captors; and there are still oak tie-beams and bosses in the roofs which looked down on that dramatic day.
