Part 01 - By Strutt's Mills
w/e 10 February 2013
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

Belper is about ten miles to the west of Ilkeston and a similar distance north of Derby. It lies within and is part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site whose website includes a number of walks at various points between Derby and the northern extremity of the Heritage Site near Matlock Bath. Two of those walks are at Belper and leaflets are available on the site to download so if you want a heads up of the route we will be following in this series, you can view the leaflet by clicking this link.

North Mill

I was recently given a couple of books in The King's England series edited by Arthur Mee, first published in the 1930s and reprinted several times during the following decade. The whole series of books with a tag line of "A New Domesday Book of 10,000 Towns and Villages" amounted to 41 volumes and each book was devoted to a county in England . The books I was given cover Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and I remember poring over these particular volumes as a child at my grandmother's so I was delighted to be reacquainted with them although many things have changed during the last fifty or sixty years. Much of the historical information contained within the pages though is still correct. The entry for Belper begins "The Derwent has made it into a busy little town, for it was its water power that moved Jedediah Strutt to build his cotton mills here" and it is at Strutt's North Mill that we begin this Heritage Walk. The mill, centre right of the image above, was rebuilt in 1804 after a fire had destroyed the original 1781 mill.
Visitor Centre

To be precise the walk begins at the Derwent Valley Visitor Centre reception which is situated inside North Mill. According to the notice board outside it is open at weekends between 1pm and 5pm during the winter (November to February) and at the same times in the summer from Wednesday to Sunday plus Bank Holiday Mondays.
Stone Bridge

The Visitor Centre is accessed from Bridge Foot which leads to Bridge Hill and the Ashbourne Road out of Belper. Bridge Foot spans the Derwent by means of, quoting from The King's England again, "a fine stone bridge of 1795, replacing the old one washed away by a flood." Another snippet in the book is that at the time of writing in the 1930s, original timbers from the foundations of the only viaduct by George Stephenson had been found in the river bed. It also states that they were as good as new despite being immersed in the water for 94 years.
Sluices & Floodgates

Just upstream from the bridge is where Jedediah Strutt built retaining walls, sluices and floodgates to control the water needed to power his mills. On the north side of the river the structures also provided a walkway to the central part of the river and an impressive crescent shaped weir.
Horseshoe Weir

That crescent shaped Horseshoe Weir of 1797 became necessary when Strutt needed more power for the West Mill which was built in 1795. The two earlier mills, North and South, had been served by a simple weir across the river but with the addition of the West Mill a greater volume of water was required. The weir was modified in 1819 and again in 1843 to increase the height and thus retain more water which by 1820 already covered some 5.8 hectares.
Water Power

Water gushing through another sluice on the south side of the river illustrates just how much power is created by the constructions from two centuries ago. All the structures across the river are now Grade II* listed.
Walk With A View

A walkway between the mills and the river passes close to the sluice gate and provides a pleasant view across the water to the Riverside Gardens.
Sluice Mechanism

The walkway also allows closer inspection of the mechanism that operates the sluice.
Weir From The Side

The symmetry of the Horseshoe Weir is also visible from the walkway showing how it acts as a barrier to the water, thus creating a reservoir which could be controlled to power the cotton spinning machines.
East Mill

The walkway continues past the East Mill which is also a listed Grade II building. Seven storeys high and best seen from a distance to appreciate its size, it was built by the English Sewing Cotton Company in 1912. Constructed around a steel frame, it can claim to be a forerunner of methods developed to build skyscrapers.
 Village Trails Index
 Belper Heritage Walk Index
Continued in Part 02

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