Little Eaton is a village and civil parish in the English county of Derbyshire. The population as taken at the 2011 Census was 2,430. The name originated from Anglo Saxon times and means the "little town by the water". It is on the former route of the old A61 (now B6179), just north of the Derby section of the A38. At the southern exit to the village from the A38, there used to be a Little Chef which closed in early 2012 and re-opened as a Starbucks in 2013. Since 1974 the village has been part of the Borough of Erewash. History Pigot and Co's Commercial Directory for Derbyshire, 1835 described Little Eaton as follows: Many of the village's historic buildings are built of stone from local quarries in the 1800s. The wealth of gritstone, minerals and coal in the area and further north in Denby, Horsley and Smalley, put Little Eaton on the map. Previously, pack horses had been used to transport goods to Derby, but in 1793 the Derby Canal was extended to Little Eaton. It continued to operate until 1908 but is now largely filled in. Peckwash paper mill, c. 1800, at the north end of the village was recorded in 1851 as one of the largest in the world and brought much prosperity to the area. It is now a private house – the chimney continues to be a dominant feature of the landscape. East of the mill, on the hill, is a terrace of 14 cottages known as Blue Mountain cottages and built for the paper mill in c.1850. Other buildings of note include the carefully renovated Grade-II-listed Malthouse on Duffield Road, which was built in 1780 and is the former home of the Little Eaton Brewery Company (later owned by Offiler's), and Elms Farmhouse at 21 Duffield Road, a Grade-II-listed working farmhouse originally built in 1704. Little Eaton was once the terminus of the Little Eaton Gangway – the Derby Canal Railway – where it joined the Derby Canal. A gang was a set of six to eight wagons drawn by four horses. The bodies of the wagons were taken off their bogies and loaded onto the barges at the canal wharf and then towed by horses to Derby. This 3' 6" gauge horse-operated line was authorised by the Derby Canal Act of 1793 and its construction was largely the work of Benjamin Outram;