This five-storey building was built in 1785 to 1790. The four upper floors contained machinery for spinning. The ground floor provided storage for cotton bales. Arkwright’s concern for security is shown by the absence of windows on the ground floor. The end of the building held the staircase. Its curved shape may have avoided damage from carts as they turned into the mill yard. The mill also contained an internal lavatory column, which served each floor and a hot air heating system. To the right of the mill is the remains of a brick arched bridge which linked this building to another mill. The design of this factory can be compared with Masson’s Mill at Matlock Bath which was built in 1783. The whole complex is grade I listed.

The aqueduct carried water from the Greyhound Pond and Cromford Sough to power the water wheels of Arkwright’s cotton mills. Built in 1821, it replaced an earlier wooden structure. The aqueduct is a grade I listed.

This three-storey building was probably Sir Richard Arkwright’s loom shop and was built between 1776 and 1786. The windows would have allowed a generous supply of light to enable hand loom weaving to take place. The left of the photograph shows two cottages prior to restoration, dating to about 1780. They probably provided accommodation for gate-keepers or watchmen. Both structures are currently grade I listed buildings.

The photograph shows four buildings. The Upper Mill in the centre was constructed in 1771 as a timber-framed structure from coursed gritstone lined with brick. The building was originally five floors in height until the top two were destroyed by fire in 1929. An overshot waterwheel provided the power for the factory. Water was supplied via an aqueduct. The building is grade I listed.

Arkwright’s factories integrated workers and machines within a 24 hour enterprise. Writing in 1790, Viscount Torrington “saw the workers issue forth at 7 o’clock, a wonderful crowd of young people, made as familiar as eternal intercourse can make them; a new set then goes in for the night, for the mills never leave off working.” He was impressed by the scale and grandeur of the factories: “These cotton mills, seven stories high, and fill’d with inhabitants, remind me of a first rate man of war; and when they are lighted up, on a dark night, look most luminously beautiful.”

(Bruyn Andrews, C, The Torrington Diaries, vol. 2 (1935), pp. 195-196.

The other three buildings are, the Loom Shop 1776-86 (left), two cottages c. 1780 (in front of the Upper Mill) and Grace Cottage c. 1780 (right).

Known to locals as the “Bear Pit”, this example of hydraulic engineering was constructed in 1785 by Sir Richard Arkwright. The structure is a stone-lined pit sunk into Cromford Sough and regulated the supply of water to the mills. A dam in the foreground of the photograph held water and forced it into an underground channel. The channel connected the sough with the Greyhound Pond, supplementing its volume of water. This happened each Sunday when the factories were idle, enabling the mill to be supplied with sufficient water when they restarted each Monday morning. The sluice controlling the supply of water to Cromford’s mills is in the background of the photograph. Arkwright faced opposition from local lead miners when he damned the Cromford Sough at the “Bear Pit” to force water into the Greyhound Pond. They lost supplies of water as a result. A major example of industrial archaeology, this example of grade II listed engineering.

The pond was a man-made dam created in about 1785 to provide the main source of water to drive the water wheels for Sir Richard Arkwright’s mills lower down the valley. It was fed by water from the Bonsall Brook and Cromford Sough via the “Bear Pit”.

The picture shows the rural landscape in which many 18th century factories were located. The Derwent Valley provided the water supply on which spinning machinery depended, not just from the river itself, but from streams such as the Bonsall Brook.
Viscount Torrington visited Cromford in June 1790 and commented on the ways in which nature was despoiled by industry:

speaking as a tourist, these vales have lost all their beauties; the rural cot has given place to a lofty red mill, and the grand houses of overseers; the stream perverted from its course by sluices, and aqueducts, will no longer ripple and cascade.-Every rural sound is sunk in the clamours of cotton works; and the simple peasant…is changed into the impudent mechanic:-the woods find their way into the canals; and the rocks disfigured for limestone…the vales are every way block’d up by mills.

(Bruyn Andrews, C, The Torrington Diaries, vol. 2 (1935), p. 195.

Image: Housing in North Street, Cromford, Derbyshire. Richard Arkwright built houses to attract people to work in his factories. North Street contained two parallel rows of substantial dwellings. The school, which was built in 1832, is located at the right-hand edge of the picture.

1. Introduction: Cromford, a Factory Community

Cromford was the creation of Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), the Preston barber who created the cotton factory. Arkwright became a successful businessman by exploiting his inventions which mechanised and accelerated the process of cotton spinning. He built mills at Cromford and nearby Matlock Bath and created a factory community with homes, a market and additional transport facilities. Arkwright rose from relatively humble origins to be knighted by George III and become one of the wealthiest men in Britain.
Arkwright patented his invention, the water frame in 1769. It enabled unskilled minders to oversee cotton spinning without the need for skilled workers. The original machine of four spindles in his patent increased in size to ninety-six spindles in production models. In 1775 he patented a second machine to open and clean the raw cotton, which was less successful. Arkwright’s machines were big. They had to be located in large buildings and powered by water wheels. Cotton was produced cheaply and this helped to stimulate demand. Arkwright’s entrepreneurial skills led him to seek an appropriate location for factory production.
Cromford was in a remote and sparsely populated part of the Derwent Valley, but its fast-flowing streams could be controlled to power the water wheels of his mills. Arkwright and his partners, Jedediah Strutt and the financier Samuel Need leased a site there in August 1771. It was close to the Bonsall Brook and Cromford Sough, a drainage channel for a lead mine, which provided a regular supply of water for his first factory. Between 1771 and 1790, Arkwright constructed mills, dams, workshops, warehouses, market and homes. His successors built a school and additional dwellings for employees. Canals, roads and railways provided the transport systems which linked Cromford to the wider world.
Little is known about the development of Cromford during the 1770s. The first mill was constructed in 1771-72, but production was slow, it was difficult to attract workers and Arkwright had to secure additional finance. A second mill was built in 1776-77 together with high quality dwellings for employees in North Street. In 1783 he constructed Masson Mill at Matlock Bath, outside of Cromford on the site of a former paper mill. Viscount Torrington visited Cromford in 1789 and 1790. He noted Arkwright’s importance: “his grateful country must adore his inventions, which have already so prosper’d our commerce; and may lead to yet wonderful improvements.” (Bruyn Andrews, C, The Torrington Diaries, vol. 2 (1935), p. 40.)
Richard Arkwright II took over his father’s business in 1792 and the Cromford mills were retained by the family until the early 20th century. Profits declined in the 1820s. Stagnation can be measured in population figures. In 1811, 1821 and 1831, census returns record numbers of inhabitants which remained static at 1,259, 1,242 and 1,291.
Masson Mill remained successful, manufacturing sewing machine thread. The Upper and Lower Mill complex ceased to make cotton. One building became a brewery and another was turned into a colour pigment factory and laundry. Fires, reconstruction, new technology and demolition affected the site. Cromford declined economically in the late 19th and 20th century. It was this decline, however, which helped to preserve much of the town with its unique collection of 18th and early 19th century grade I, II* and II listed buildings.
In 2001, the Derwent Valley was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. As well as Cromford, it included, Derby’s silk factory built by the Lombe brothers in 1721, cotton mills and housing at Darley Abbey and the factories and communities created by the Strutts at Milford and Belper. The Derwent Valley became one of only 21 such sites in the United Kingdom. This enhanced opportunities to preserve buildings and other features in the local landscape and access funding to develop tourism and education.