  Location within Derbyshire | |
| Cotton | |
|---|---|
| Spinning watermill | |
| Client | Richard Arkwright |
| Further ownership |
|
| Coordinates | 53°13′05″N1°41′01″W / 53.2180°N 1.6836°W Coordinates: 53°13′05″N1°41′01″W / 53.2180°N 1.6836°W |
| Construction | |
| Built | 1777 |
| Employees | 350 |
| Water Power | |
| Wheels |
|
Lumford Mill was a historic cotton mill at Bakewell in Derbyshire, England.
A cotton mill is a building housing spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Bakewell is a small market town and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales district of Derbyshire, England, known for a local confection, Bakewell pudding. It lies on the River Wye, about 13 miles south-west of Sheffield. In the 2011 census the civil parish of Bakewell had a population of 3,949. The town is close to the tourist attractions of Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall.
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire, containing the southern extremity of the Pennine range of hills which extend into the north of the county. The county contains part of the National Forest, and borders on Greater Manchester to the northwest, West Yorkshire to the north, South Yorkshire to the northeast, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the southeast, Staffordshire to the west and southwest and Cheshire also to the west. Kinder Scout, at 636 metres (2,087 ft), is the highest point in the county, whilst Trent Meadows, where the River Trent leaves Derbyshire, is its lowest point at 27 metres (89 ft). The River Derwent is the county's longest river at 66 miles (106 km), and runs roughly north to south through the county. In 2003 the Ordnance Survey placed Church Flatts Farm at Coton in the Elms as the furthest point from the sea in Great Britain.
In 1777, Richard Arkwright leased a stretch of land by the River Wye from Philip Gell of Hopton. He installed his son as manager but there were problems with water rights. Upstream from the mill, they were owned by the Duke of Devonshire and downstream by the Duke of Rutland, both of whom were hostile to industrial development in the area as would later be the case with the railway.
Sir Richard Arkwright was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as the water frame after it was adapted to use water power; and he patented a rotary carding engine to convert raw cotton to "cotton lap" prior to spinning. He was the first to develop factories housing both mechanised carding and spinning operations.
The River Wye is the fifth-longest river in the UK, stretching some 215 kilometres from its source on Plynlimon in mid Wales to the Severn estuary. For much of its length the river forms part of the border between England and Wales. The Wye Valley is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Wye is important for nature conservation and recreation.
Hopton is a small village adjacent to the village of Carsington and two miles away from the market town of Wirksworth in the Peak District.
But in any case Arkwright had not sought to gain permission, constructing dams and ponds, extracting sand, gravel and soil from land on the Rutland estate, altering the course of the river, and interfering with the Duke of Devonshire's fishing. This resulted in court cases in which Arkwright admitted trespass and paid compensation and a rent of £10 a year. From then on the mill prospered.
It was one of the few that Arkwright's son retained when he sold most of his cotton ventures and moved into banking.
There were difficulties in recruiting locally, so girls were brought in from Manchester. It was sold in 1860 to the Duke of Devonshire, but it burned down and was rebuilt in around 1890. At its peak it employed some 350 people. In 1898 the mill was taken over by the Dujardin-Plante Company who manufactured electric storage batteries.
Manchester is a major city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 534,982 as of 2018. It lies within the United Kingdom's second-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.9 million, and third-most populous metropolitan area, with a population of 3.3 million. It is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority for the city is Manchester City Council.
Throughout this time it continued to use water power with two high breast-shot wheels which had been installed in 1827 and 1852, replacing the original undershot wheel. After a hundred years of almost continuous working, a gear segment of the older wheel broke and jammed, to be replaced by water turbines.
Lumford Mill still stands today, under the name of Riverside Business Park Ltd. Proudly continuing its industrial lineage, the site is one of the largest industrial estates within the National Park, and is home to around 40 local businesses, some of which still work out of the old mill buildings. A number of the original mill workers cottages are also still inhabited at the site.
