The Low-carbon Industrial Revolution – Strategic Objectives

By contrast with Derby, the Derwent Valley upstream of Darley Abbey cannot claim a legacy of textile engineering and manufacture as a basis for its industrialisation in the later 18th century. To this extent, there seems limited justification for arguing that local mechanical expertise and engineering skills would have been significant causative factors in the textile-based industrialisation of the Valley. However, the mills of the Derwent Valley would certainly have been able to draw on a rich variety of skills, both locally and from neighbouring regions. Prior to the development from the mid-19th century of professional bodies, craft unions and formal qualifications, the diverse knowledge and transferable skills of millwrights and smiths are likely to have been especially prized by industrialists.¹ In the Derwent Valley, workers with mechanical expertise would have been essential for iron-working, the making and mending of mining, quarrying and mineral-processing equipment, the construction and maintenance of associated waterworks, soughs and leats, and work in related agriculturally based technologies such as milling.² Neighbouring areas, especially Derby, the mining and iron-working centres of Sheffield, Birmingham and the Black Country, and the lace and hosiery manufacturing centres of Nottinghamshire may also have provided skilled labour resources.³ From this perspective, the location of the Valley at a crossroads between routes linking Lancashire and Cheshire to Nottingham and Birmingham and the Black Country to Sheffield, may have had some influence.⁴

In this context, it is recommended that further research focus upon the location of archival sources that may elucidate the following: evolving patterns of demand for particular kinds of mechanical expertise; the impact of such demands upon the nature, success and extent of industrialisation; the means by which mechanical expertise was disseminated and transformed; the specific synergies between local trades and the developing need for skills and expertise; the training and socialisation demands of a diversely skilled workforce in new industrial contexts; the relationships between ‘proto-industrial’ millwrighting and smithing trades; the development of engineering practice and associated mechanical skills; and changing patterns of mobility and migration for workers with mechanical expertise.

George Revill

Fig.4.19 Cromford Mill: single ‘Arkwright Spinning Head’. This innovative machine formed the heart of Arkwright’s water frame,⁵ which typically would have required 24 spinning heads and 96 spindles. The components of the water frame and of the associated preparatory machines could have been constructed by local craftsmen, except perhaps parts requiring specialist clock-making skills for their manufacture (photograph © Patrick Strange)

Fig.4.20 Clock-makers, who head the list of required labour in Arkwright’s oft-quoted advertisement in the Derby Mercury of 10 December 1771, may need to have been sought in neighbouring towns such as Derby, Ashbourne and Nottingham rather than locally (reproduced by permission of the Derby Local Studies and Family History Library)

References

¹ Berg, M 1994 The Age of Manufactures 1700–1820. London: Routledge

² Nixon, F 1969 The Industrial Archaeology of Derbyshire. Newton Abbot: David and Charles

³ Langton, J and Morris, R J 1986 Atlas of Industrializing Britain, 1790–1914. London: Routledge; Smith, D M 1965 Industrial Archaeology of the East Midlands. Newton Abbot: David & Charles

⁴ Southall, H R 1991 ‘Mobility, the artisan community, and popular politics in early nineteenth century England’ in Kearns, G and Withers, C (eds) Urbanising Britain: Class and Community in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: CUP, 103–13

⁵ Fitton, R S 1989 The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune. Manchester: MUP, 24–5

Domestic outworking in textile production was widespread across the East Midlands, particularly for the manufacture of hosiery, from the late 17th century onwards.¹ The Derwent Valley mill owners of the 18th century introduced significant technological innovations, as well as increasing the employment opportunities for family members, but the impact of these changes on existing outworking in the area is not clear.

Recent work has begun to analyse the extensive 18th and 19th century workers’ housing that survives in Cromford, Belper, Milford and Darley Abbey,² but more needs to be known about how far these buildings were utilised for outworking as well as providing homes for factory-based workers. Some of the houses, as in North Street at Cromford and Brick Row in Darley Abbey, included attics with window lights which, as elsewhere in the East Midlands, could have accommodated framework knitters or weavers.³ In Belper, the mills were imposed on a small village previously focusing on framework knitting and domestic-scale nail-making.^4-6 These non-factory activities certainly continued throughout the 19th century, and further research is required to investigate how far this workforce interacted with the mill workers and to establish the occupations of residents in the Strutt houses of Belper and Milford. To what extent did members of the same family participate in both types of working, as in south-west England?⁷ Was their continuation encouraged by the mill owners to achieve a diversified workforce, providing employment for more men than could be employed in the mills? Further analysis of the houses and associated workshops in these and other settlements in the Valley, following on from the work of Suzanne Lilley,⁸ may help to clarify the importance of outworking in relation to factory-based industries. This should be combined with analyses of census returns, parish and probate records, rent books, personal documents and Parliamentary Commission Reports relating to domestic industry – building for instance upon on-going work by Belper North Mill volunteers⁹ on the occupants of the nearby Strutt houses. A detailed scrutiny of William Felkin’s account of the hosiery and lace industries, which contains a statistical analysis of the 1844 Framework Knitters’ Report,¹⁰ would also be of considerable value.

Garry Campion and Marilyn Palmer

Domestic accommodation was provided on the ground and first floors, while the top floor was employed as a workshop. The elongated third storey windows would have ensured sufficient light for home-based textile workers (photograph © David Knight)

References

¹ Chapman, S D 2002 Hosiery and Knitwear: Four Centuries of Small-scale Industry in Britain. Oxford: OUP

² Lilley, S 2015 ‘”Cottoning on” to workers’ housing: A historical archaeology of industrial accommodation in the Derwent Valley, 1776–1821’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of York

³ Timmins, G 2005 ‘Domestic industry in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries: Field evidence and the research agenda’. IAR 27 (1), 67–75

⁴ Chambers, J D and Barley, M W 1961 ‘Industrial Monuments at Milford and Belper’. IAR 18 (2), 256–9

⁵ Robson, M E 1964 ‘The nailmaking industry in Belper’. Derbyshire Miscellany 3 (2), 495–502

⁶ Stroud, G 2004 Derbyshire Extensive Urban Survey Archaeological Assessment Report: Belper. Matlock: DCC

⁷ Palmer, M and Neaverson, P A 2005 The Textile

Industry of South-West England: A Social Archaeology. Stroud: Tempus

⁸ See Note 2: Lilley 2015

⁹ http://belpernorthmill.org/volunteers.html

¹⁰ Felkin, W 1867 A History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures. London: Longman

The prime natural resource of the region from the perspective of the early factory builders derived from the River Derwent and its major tributaries – especially where watercourses were fast-moving and regular in their flow. The advantages of these rivers as sources of power had long been recognised, enabling the early entrepreneurs to select sites with good track records for the harnessing of water power. This locational strategy is demonstrated at Masson Mill, which was built next to an earlier paper mill (Fig.4.21),¹ and at Boar’s Head Mills, which postdated a complex sequence of medieval to post-medieval water-powered fulling, corn, paper, flint and leather mills.² Building upon this natural resource, engineers often devised ingenious solutions to the problem of maintaining a reliable water supply and ensuring sufficient water energy. At Arkwright’s Cromford Mills, for example, water derived from diversion of the Bonsall Brook was supplemented via the Cromford Sough by a steady flow of water that did not freeze in winter.³ Similarly, at Belper, Jedediah Strutt provided the extra water energy that was required to support his expanding factory complex by investing in a water management scheme that culminated in 1797 with his remarkable Horseshoe Weir.⁴

Many mills in other areas were of course powered by fast-running water, including Styal in Cheshire and New Lanark near Glasgow, but a distinctive feature of the Valley in the northern reaches of the World Heritage Site is the juxtaposition of riverine water power and lead ore resources: another key natural resource that by means of its sough networks (Objective 10C) provided important additional sources of water power. This point was certainly not lost on Arkwright, whose exploitation of the Cromford sough was crucial to the success of his pioneering cotton-spinning mills. Moreover, by providing significant employment for men, lead mining also created for the mill owners a potential labour force of unskilled and semi-skilled female and child labour accustomed to textile outwork. Other natural resources, such as locally available building stone, are also likely to have impacted upon locational decision-making, especially in view of the region’s poor transport links in the 18th century (Objective 8A).⁵ Further documentary research is recommended into the exploitation of natural resources, the distinctive nature of these and the transport viability of the Valley in the late 18th century – especially by counterfactual economic history such as has been carried out for the early British railway network.⁶ Finally, less a natural resource than an accident of geography, the proximity of the Derwent Valley to Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, all of which were important centres of 18th century framework knitting, would no doubt have strengthened further its locational appeal. In the longer term, however, this locational advantage assumed less significance than proximity to raw materials and overseas markets, as demonstrated by the rise to dominance in the 19th century of the factories of Lancashire and Cheshire.

 Chris Wrigley

Fig.4.22 Extract from George Robertson’s watercolour of Masson Mill (c.1790) looking upstream along the limestone gorge between Cromford and Matlock. The building in the middle distance, adjacent to the weir across the fast-flowing Derwent, is thought to be Masson Paper Mill. The latter was built in 1770, some13 years before Masson Mill, and was influential in the siting of the later cotton-spinning mill (©Derby Museums Trust) 

References

¹ Chapman, S D 2015 Sir Richard Arkwright’s Masson Mills, Matlock, Derbyshire. Chesterfield: Merton, 12, 20; DVMP 2011 The Derwent Valley Mills and their Communities. Matlock: DVMP, 21

² Menuge, A 2006 Boar’s Head Mills: A Survey and Investigation of the Cotton Mills and Ancillary Buildings. Swindon: English Heritage, 6

³ Buxton, D and Charlton, C 2013 Cromford Revisited. Matlock: DVMWHS Educational Trust, 41–4; Fitton, R S 1989 The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune. Manchester: MUP, 28; Fitton, R S and Wadsworth, A P 1958 The Strutts and the Arkwrights. Manchester: MUP, 64–5

⁴ Fitton and Wadsworth 1958, 221–2

⁵ Notably around Cromford: Buxton and Charlton 2013, 141–58

⁶ Casson, M 2009 The Word’s First Railway System: Enterprise, Competition and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain. Oxford: OUP

The Derwent Valley Mills were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in recognition of the pivotal importance of the Valley for the development of the factory system, which significantly was driven not by fossil fuel but by water energy. The harnessing of water power generated by rivers and soughs is well documented, but there remains scope for further study of how the Valley managed to grow as a low-carbon community for over seventy years and to compete effectively with fossil-fuel powered mills in areas such as Lancashire and Cheshire. From this perspective, measures by which the mill owners and their engineers developed through innovation the mills’ ability to harness efficiently the available water resources to meet growing demands merit particular attention. There is also an opportunity to learn how the developing industrial communities of the Valley were able to feed the rapidly growing population. This would help to enhance understanding of key elements of the low-carbon food supply of the period, and in particular the development of model farms.¹

Along the 24km stretch of the World Heritage Site, with its varying topography and geology, the various mill owners developed a wide variety of methods for securing and managing their water supply. These included the complex network of soughs and brooks that was developed at Cromford and the innovative horseshoe weir at Belper, discussed above,² together with weirs at Masson, Milford and Darley Abbey.³ Particular attention should be drawn to the wide variety of technical innovations in the 18th and 19th centuries that, together with the increasing availability of cast and wrought iron, enabled construction of water wheels of improved efficiency, reliability and longevity, permitting therefore effective competition with fossil-fuel powered mills in other areas of the country.⁴ The contributions of Thomas Hewes, the ‘ingenious mechanic and engineer of Manchester’,⁵ including his development at Belper of the innovative suspension wheel,⁶ merit special consideration, no less so than his achievements at the contemporary Quarry Bank Mill at Styal in Cheshire.⁷ It is clear that his innovations in the control of water, such as the regulation by double hatch and the adaption of governor technologies,^8,9 allowed the Belper Mill complex to expand to an impressive eleven water wheels.¹⁰ However, for all his achievements Hewes remains a comparatively neglected pioneer in water engineering.  Another important innovation, described by Rees in his early 19th century Cyclopaedia,¹¹ is the wooden water wheel that was installed by Strutt in the now demolished West Mill at Belper (Fig. 4.23).¹² Further research into such technical developments, including detailed study of references to water power in Rees’s Cyclopaedia, would be invaluable as a means of elucidating further this comparatively neglected but highly significant aspect of the Industrial Revolution in the Derwent Valley.

Ian Jackson and George Revill

Fig.4.23 Visual interpretation by Alan Gifford of Abraham Rees’s description¹¹ of the cylindrical wooden water wheel that was installed at Belper’s West Mill (redrawn by Phillip Proudlove; reproduced by courtesy of A. Gifford) 

References

¹ Wade Martins, S 2002 The English Model Farm: Building the Agricultural Ideal, 1700–1914. Macclesfield: Windgather Press

² Strategic Objective 4C: footnotes 3 and 4

³ DVMP 2011 The Derwent Valley Mills and Their Communities. Matlock: DVMP, 27, 69–70, 73

⁴ Hills, R L 1970 Power in the Industrial Revolution. Manchester: MUP, 93–115

⁵ Glover, S 1833 The History and Gazetteer of the County of Derby, Part 2. Derby: Henry Mozley, 101

⁶ Gifford, A 1994 ‘The water works at Strutt’s Mill at Belper and the first suspension waterwheel’. Wind and Water Mills 13, 2–13

⁷ Rose, M B 1986 The Gregs of Quarry Bank Mill. Cambridge: CUP, 38

⁸ Mechanics Magazine 1847: https://archive.org/details/ mechanicsmagazi00robegoog

⁹ Musson, A E and Robinson, E 1969 Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. Manchester: MUP, 70–1

¹⁰ Glover 1833, 101

¹¹ Rees, A 1802-20 The Cyclopaedia, or Universal Directory of Arts, Science and Literature, 39 vols. London: Longman

¹² See also Hills 1970, 110–11

The control and ownership of land and water resources were key factors in the development of early industry and the growth of the factory system that drove the Industrial Revolution, not only in the Derwent Valley¹ but also in England generally.² In the 18th century, factories were located on rivers which could provide water power, whilst proximity to navigable rivers (and subsequently canals) was important for the transportation of relatively fragile as well as heavy goods – as exemplified by the movement of cargoes of pottery, ironwork and other commodities along major rivers such as the Severn³ and Trent.⁴ Competitively priced land with good access to a water course, and with no restrictions on its use, was a vital consideration in the location and growth of major industrial centres, and further study of the role of Derwent Valley land-owners in the initiation and proliferation of industrial growth may be identified as a fruitful area for investigation. Recent studies in the establishment of the factory system of production in north-western England⁵ have emphasised the importance of the availability of land as a factor enabling industrial development to flourish – and highlight the scope for further research, where documentation permits, into the extent to which local landowners seized the opportunity to make money from industrial enterprises.

Several recent studies of Derwent Valley archive collections point the way for further research. These include an examination of estate records for Lea Wood by members of the Dethick, Lea and Holloway Historical Society, which has revealed the important role of the Nightingale family in the development of the lead-smelting industry on their lands downstream of Cromford.⁶ In addition, detailed scrutiny of documents preserved in the Derbyshire Record Office and other archive collections has shed significant new light upon the important role of Peter Nightingale junior (1736–1803) in the establishment of Sir Richard Arkwright’s cotton-spinning mills at Cromford.⁷ Further research on the documentation relating to land ownership that is held in archive repositories may help to identify and chart the progress of emerging landowning entrepreneurs and to elucidate further the role they played in the industrialisation of the Valley (as well as providing information on emerging markets and patterns of trade). As demonstrated by recent archaeological surveys and excavations in Lea Wood,⁸ this may also assist in identifying areas that would benefit from field survey to locate and record early industrial sites, thus contributing to progress on Objective 2A.

Robin Holgate

Fig.4.24 Front elevation of the younger Peter Nightingale’s imposing house at Lea Hall, near Cromford, showing the classical frontage that he added in the mid-18th century to the original farmhouse. Recent documentary research⁷ has demonstrated the pivotal role played by this wealthy landowner and lead merchant in the financing of Arkwright’s cotton mills, workers’ housing and associated infrastructure (photograph © Jane Middleton-Smith)

References

¹ Eg Buxton, D and Charlton, C 2013 Cromford Revisited. Matlock: DVMWHS Educational Trust, 41–4

² Trinder, B 1981 The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire. London: Phillimore, especially 30–3

³ Trinder, B 2005 Barges and Bargemen: A Social History of the Upper Severn Navigation, 1660–1900. Chichester: Phillimore

⁴ Maslen, H (ed) 2014 Trent Navigation Company Gauging Books 1799–1919. Chesterfield: Derbyshire Record Society

⁵ Walker, J and Nevell, M 2003 ‘The origins of industrialisation and the Manchester methodology: the roles of Lord, freeholder and tenant in Tameside during industrialisation, 1600–1900’ in Nevell, M (ed) From Farmer to Factory Owner: Models, Methodology and Industrialisation. Archaeological Approaches to the Industrial Revolution in North-West England Manchester: CBA North West and University of Manchester Archaeology Unit, 17–26

⁶ Hawksley, J and Brightman, J 2014 The Story of Lea Wood. Its History, Ecology and Archaeology. Lea: Dethick, Lea and Holloway Historical Society

⁷ Chapman, S 2013 ‘Peter Nightingale, Richard Arkwright, and the Derwent Valley cotton mills, 1771–1818’. DAJ 133, 166–88

⁸ Hawksley and Brightman 2014