Sparrowpit is a small linear village in the High Peak with a string of weatherworn and exposed gritstone cottages which appear to creep up beside the old packhorse road to Chapel-en-le-Frith.
A Bronze Age round barrow stands on the hilltop at Sparrowpit, which was on the route of an old saltway which came from the salt plains of Cheshire through Chapel-en-le-Frith before heading up over Peaselows to Sparrowpit and on to Castleton via Winnats Pass and then to Yorkshire and beyond.
Apart from a scattering of farms and cottages, the hamlet of Sparrowpit has a popular public house which is strangely named The Wanted Inn. This former coaching inn dates back to at least the 1800’s when it was known as The Three Tuns as it stood at a junction where three turnpike roads converged. In the 19th century it had been re-named The Devonshire Arms after the Duke of Devonshire who owned vast tracts of land hereabouts and was Lord of the Manor. On the death of the 10th Duke in 1950 the inn was put up for sale but failed to get any bids and was therefore ‘unwanted’. At a second auction in 1956 it was purchased by a Mr & Mrs Buswell who set about restoring and updating the pub and sympathetically called it by the new title of The Wanted Inn.
Sparrowpit belongs to the Parish of nearby Peak Forest and would have been part of the Royal Forest of the Peak in medieval times.