Melbourne is a town in South Derbyshire close to the River Trent, which may have originated as buildings associated with the royal manor to the south of the nearby settlement at Kings Newton.[1] Melbourne Castle was constructed on the site of an earlier manor house of unknown date; there is an old tradition that the manor was originally established in about the year 900, during the reign of Alfred the Great, but there is no evidence for this.[2] As recorded in the Domesday Book, the manor of Melbourne and its lands were the property of King Edward the Confessor prior to the Norman Conquest.