The information contained in this section can be found in the book titled, " The Derwent Valley Mills and its Communities". For more information see our publications section.
It is now more than 30 years since the late Professor J D Chambers described the Derwent Valley as the “cradle of the new factory system”. It is an accolade which has stood the test of critical analysis, further research and reflection. It was here in the Derwent Valley that the essential ingredients of factory production were successfully combined. A source of power, in this case water power, was applied to a series of complex mechanised processes for the first time on a relatively large scale. Not only was textile production revolutionised with dramatic consequences for the British economy, the Arkwright model also informed and inspired developments in other industries.
Why these developments should have happened in the Derwent Valley, rather than in any one of numerous locations endowed by nature with a reasonable water supply, is a question to which there may be no single answer. The natural potential of the river Derwent, at first sight a powerful element in the story, is on closer examination less a determining influence in the first steps of this chain of events than might be anticipated. The water power requirements of the early initiatives in Derby and in Cromford were so small, a large source of water power would have been an embarrassment. So in Derby, Lombe used the town corn mill weir and leats; and in Cromford, Arkwright positioned his first mill on a lead mine drainage channel and a modest brook. The later developments in Belper, Milford and Darley Abbey and at Masson Mill, were on a larger scale: by this time, it was worth investing substantially in the engineering solutions required to tame the volatility of the river and so enjoy the massive power it could provide.
For Lombe, recent research suggests Derby’s leading citizens wanted the silk mill established there. It is known that Arkwright sought a reliable source of water but he was also attracted by the easy availability of child labour in and around Cromford, where the lead mining industry offered little scope for the employment of young children. He also needed to be near the hosiery centres of Derby and Nottingham where he expected to sell his yarn.
This market horizon was also the boundary within which Arkwright’s financial sponsors - Samuel Need from Nottingham and Jedediah Strutt from Derby - were prepared to operate.
The problem they sought to resolve was widely recognised. Demand for yarn had outstripped supply and while Hargreaves’ Jenny offered a significant increase in output over hand-spinning, it was a relatively complicated machine to operate and not suitable for child labour. The Arkwright frame and the family of devices which followed it were, in contrast, all of a scale and simplicity of operation as to be suitable for young people.
Sir Richard did not achieve all his objectives. Some processes eluded even his mechanical skill. He had to persevere with hand picking and cleaning his raw cotton: the devices he had patented for this purpose did not work. But even where hands had to replace machines in the Arkwright system, he ensured the smooth delivery from one process to the next. Stanley Chapman sees this as the essence of Arkwright’s achievement: “The novel requirement was co-ordinating and managerial skill rather than the traditional artisan technology”. Once the Arkwright system had been established it was the absence or scarcity of such skills which as much as any other factor determined the rate at which the system was disseminated. Those who mastered the new spinning system found they possessed skills which were much in demand. It was through these custodians of the new technology that the Arkwright system was propagated at home and abroad.
By 1782-84 it was clear that Arkwright’s patents were at risk, and after 1785, all restrictions had been set aside. Investment opportunities in the new industry, which had been confined to Arkwright, his partners and his licensees (and some who operated outside the law), now became available to a wide spectrum of investors, opportunists and would-be entrepreneurs. By 1788, Chapman’s figures suggest no less than 208 Arkwright-type mills were in existence in Great Britain and there were four mills in France and five in Germany. There were also a number of mills in Ireland. Already the development which had begun so tentatively in Cromford in 1771 had instigated widespread cultural and economic change.
Our inheritance from the Derwent factory masters, Richard Arkwright, Jedediah Strutt, Peter Nightingale and Thomas Evans, also includes some of the first examples of factory housing and of industrial communities. These are not model villages in the sense that they were pre-planned or built to a known blue-print but they soon became models for other community builders within Great Britain and abroad. Within these social units the factory master (later it would be more accurate to use the word squire) was almost as much in control of the residents in their homes as he was of his workforce in the mills. The social controls which are most obvious in Belper, the tied houses, the fines for misbehaviour at work and in the street, the watchmen, the payments in truck and the more subtle influences associated with food and welfare provision, were no doubt in use in Cromford and Darley Abbey in a similar if not identical form. But the documentary evidence of life in these communities has not survived to the degree it has for Belper and Milford.