It was in Derbyshire in the late 18th Century that innovators such as Sir Richard Arkwright and Jedediah Strutt built the world's first successful cotton mills at Cromford and Belper. These early mills pioneered many of the principles of modern factory working and started what became known as the Industrial Revolution. It can even be argued that the early mills in the Derwent Valley contained early forms of the production lines popularised many years later by Henry Ford and others. These momentous events led eventually to the modern industrialised world we live in today, and Derbyshire's role in them was finally recognised in 2001 with the creation of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

In many ways, Derbyshire is hallowed ground for walkers in the UK, as the Peak District was the focus of much of the "Right to Roam" campaign in the early part of the 20th Century. Led by campaigners such as Benny Rothman and G.H.B. "Burt" Ward, this pressed for increased access to the countryside for ordinary working people at a time when much of the land was closed to them and access jealously guarded by various aristocratic landowners. This campaign led to the famous "Kinder Mass Trespass" on April 24th, 1932, which is now seen as a watershed moment in the campaign to open up public access to the countryside.

Besides the house and gardens, the Chatsworth estate is also home to a popular farm shop and a number of small villages. The churchyard of one of these, Edensor, contains the grave of Kathleen Kennedy, the sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was married to the eldest son of the 10th Duke and died in a plane crash in France in 1948. When President Kennedy visited the UK in June 1963, just months before his own death, he paid a private visit to her grave, having been unable to attend her funeral.

With Belvoir Castle as their main residence, that was where the Dukes carried out most of their main improvements and updatings, leaving Haddon Hall essentially untouched and little-used. Over the years, it bceame semi-derelict until restored in the 20th Century by the 9th Duke of Rutland. Today, it is the residence of Lord Edward Manners, the brother of the 11th Duke, and its well-preserved medieval and Tudor features make it a popular location for the filming of period dramas.

Students of ancient history are well-served by the county, which is home to many mysterious sites from the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. Possibly the two most famous of these are the hill fort of Mam Tor near Castleton in the north of the county, and the so-called "Stonehenge of the north", the stone circle of Arbor Low near Bakewell. The county contains a number of other smaller stone circles, such as the Nine Ladies near Matlock, plus quite a number of burial mounds and other similar features. And the county is also home to some Roman remains too. Besides roads, these comprise a small number of forts and fortlets scattered around the county, with the most significant and best preserved being Navio, near Hope in the north of the county.

One other claim that the county is rightly very proud of is its connections to the famous "Dambusters" raid of May 1943. Barnes Wallis, the designer of the unique "Bouncing Bomb" was born just outside Ripley in the centre of the county, while Derwent Dam in the north doubled as the Mohne Dam in the many practice missions flown by 617 Squadron before the raid itself, and was also used for the filming of the ever-popular 1950s movie depicting the raid. Derwent Dam is now home to a memorial dedicated to the 53 aircrew lost on the raid, and has seen many commemorative flypasts by the RAF's last surviving Lancaster bomber.