Derbyshire 30 - Cromford, Arkwrights mill, a trip down memory lane and a visit t'mill in the Derwent Valley

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Autumn. One by one the petals drop There's nothing that can make them stop. You cannot beg a rose to stay. Why does it have to be that way? The words of a poem that sums up Autumn. One by one the leaves have been turning to burnished gold, plum and crimson, buttermilk to bronze. Then they fall like confetti or snow falling onto the pavements . Crisp and crinkling under foot they invite a toe to poke through them. A foot to kick them and for a hand to scrabble to find a conker or acorn hidden deep within them. The mists roll in and set the scene. The spiders weave their silken threads from the last die hard fuschia to the branches of the Cotoneaster covered in bright red berries . The berries invite the blackbirds in to pick them off. The webs shine in the limp, wan sunlight like diamonds or pearls strung along a necklace. Autumn has arrived.

Let me invite you out on a trip today. Despite being Autumn the sun is shining limply and there is still a little heat in it. You don't need your coat . You won't be walking far. You can put those gloves and that scarf away for the time being. You might need them though the end of the week when the cold winds come in from the North and the first frosts of the season kill off the last of the summer colour.

We are off to the Derwent Valley . To the mill. We are going back to the Industrial Revolution. That event or events to be more precise that changed Britain as a country forever. For the first time more folks lived in the towns and cities than did in the countryside. Millions moved from rural domesticity and cottage industry to the factories up north. To the grim brick buildings were money was to be made but you needed to work hard for it. Where life seemed on the face of it better than what you had before but reality it meant slums, it meant disease, it meant overcrowding and in some cases unscrupulous mill owners. The safety of the house and hearth, the cottage in the country was changed to life in a northern town. That is not to say there were not good mill owners and Arkwright was one of those. He built houses for his workers in nearby Cromford. He provided for their education and well being. They lived in a fairly pleasant rural setting not far removed from what they knew before. If there was a good mill then perhaps this was one of them.

Come on grab your things we are going in the car for the short journey from home to Masson Mill. Ok you can have breakfast when we get there and a bit of retail therapy too. The mill now is a bustling building complete with shops, tea rooms, conference centre and a working mill complete with museum complex. It was built in 1783 as a showpeice mill by Sir Richard Arkwright known as the Father of the Factory system. The huge building must have been a shock to the locals in its sheer size as it grew up brick by brick by the River Derwent. It would have run night and day and the valley would have been full of noise, smoke and lights would have been seen well into the night as it produced its products for the growing market at home and abroad. We are parking on the rather large car park. £1 for an hour and we even get 50p back from that to spend on goods or in the tea room. Clever marketing ploy there. Masson looms above us built in red ruabon style brick. A huge chimney gives away the fact that there are steam boilers in there somewhere. Yes we will go and see them.

Our first stop is the shopping mall. Three floors full of goods. Clothes anything from a jacket to shoes, from coats to jumpers through to shirts. Bedding, curtains, Christmas presents and candles. Oh brilliant - jigsaws . We buy two - one of Venice and one of the lovely Tuscan scenery. I know your stomach is rumbling. So is mine. We head down to the ground floor which is set out as a tea room. Look around you it still maintains the structure of a mill. A vaulted brick ceiling painted white to reflect the light through its large windows. Brick to prevent fire spreading from floor to floor. All along the floor wrought iron columns holding up the ceilings. It could have been knocked down or turned in to office space or flats but it maintains its original feel. We order breakfast . What would you like? Six items - bacon, eggs sunny side up, sausage , beans or tomatoes, a hash brown and mushrooms. You can have black pudding if you want . Tea - Breakfast tea or Earl Grey. Coffee - fair trade profits go to buy up parts of the rain forest to save it from destruction. That's it eat up - we off to see t'mill!

Let's just say what you are about to see is one of the foremost mills of its day. A finest surviving example and best preserved of his mills. So where do we start ? Outside. That's not a bad place to start. Look up and what do you see? A fancy Venetian style facade to the central section of the building. This is what you see from the road emblazoned with the words "Sir Richard Arkwright & Co " Underneath "established 1769" It shows his confidence in his building style and his worth. The windows picked out in stone. Above the bay is a white bellcote and a cupola. It is an impressive building don't you think? I have been to both Styal Mill near Manchester and New Lanark mills and they are more utilitarian in design. This mill has a certain charm and actually sits pretty on its bluff above the Derwent River.

Ok get your money out. It is going to cost £2.50 each concessionary rate for pensioners to get in. We pay. We are handed a clocking in card as an entry ticket. Go on shove it in the clocking in machine and get it clocked in. You know you want to. We walk to the staircase in the middle of the building. It is a fairly simple affair but is unique in that it allowed the main production areas of the mill to remain unemcombered by the folks moving about the mill. The idea soon spread throughout Britain as other mills followed suit and it crossed over the pond shere it became a defining architectural feature of American textile mills.

At the top of the steps is the great Masson Mill bell. It was rung at 6am to summon the millworkers from the surrounding villages to work. When it stopped the gates were often closed so that if you were late there would be no work for you that day. Better than any alarm clock.

Walk with me down the stairs to the doubling room. This is the heart of the old mill. The machines in this room are original to the mill and Arkwright if he walked in today would recognise them. His water frame is still making yarn today. That says a lot about the technology of the day and the quality of the workmanship.

The next room we enter is the weaving shed. Inside as you look round you see Lancashire and Yorkshire looms which were used to weave cotton cloth. He bought these second hand in 1867. The machines are complete with pirn winders which wind the cotton thread and put it into a shuttle . As the shuttles went back and forth the noise must have been horrific. Beneath these machines just enough space for children to crawl under when it was necessary to repair a broken thread. It was easy to imagine the noise as an engine was running whilst we walked round . Easy to see how little fingers would get broken and trapped.

In the same room look up and you can see the Jaquard Looms which produced the most intricate of designs using holes punched in cards. A sort of paper version of a computer programme. These fascinate me most as I wonder how a machine with pins can produce a design when prompted by only holes. From here we walk out to the spinning and carding sheds with the Asa Lees condenser the longest working example of its kind in the world. Masson seems to have a lot of firsts or only ones in the world. No wonder it has its status protected as a world heritage site. Cromptons Mule which combined the Spinning Jenny and the Arkwrights water frame is there. It brought together all the processes of spining and drawing thread into one machine. An innovation if ever there was one. Mule spinners were well paid and highly skilled. Working barefoot they could step to and fro following the movement of the carriage picking up fallen cotton between their toes. To our right balebreakers . Monstrous machines that looked fearful. Known as the Fearnought or the Devil they earned their names. Cotton bales were thrown on and the spikes opened the bales and cleaned the cotton. Well named it was a dangerous machine. No health and safety here so to speak. You run the machine or get no wages. No wages and the family starve. You might even find yourself homeless as you lived in the company houses. Limbs were lost as men fell into the machine. Women and children were a tad luckier. They were not allowed to man the machine. Next door the overseers office. Then to the mechanics shop . All mills maintained their own machinery. You could not call in the big boys to repair your broken machine and a broken machine meant no profit . So this job was an important part of mill life. Mechanics shops full of lathes, steam engines pillar drills, steam hammers and a blacksmiths forge.

Next stop we walk into the bobbin shop. Each mill had its own style of bobbin . Inside is the largest collection of bobbins in the world . Can you imagine over 68,000 at the last count? I can't and what happens if you lose count half way through . Was that 4,500 bobbins or 5,400 ? Drat I have to start counting again ...............one , two , three ...............fifty , sixty ..............................

From here to the turbine house and something different. We see the water supply from the river Derwent which flows past. We see the hydroelectric turbines and inside the boiler house are four iron boilers. Two big belching heaving and thundering Lancashire boilers full of coal from the Derbyshire coalfields, belching smoke up the chimney and boiling the steam to run the mill machinery. Installed in 1911 by Yates and Thorn of Blackburn they are fearsome dragons of beasts . They bring back memories of the boiler in my junior school in the 1950's.

That folks is the end of our tour . We have seen it all and it is time to go and find the car for our ride home. It's been a lovely day. I hope you enjoyed it and agree with me. Industrial history isn't dry and dull. It is as fascinating as any castle or any palace and tells the story of ordinary folk. Folk who left little of themselves behind. But once you visit a place like Masson Mill it is sanitized and clean. It is hard to imagine what life must have been like but at least we get a taste of it and see something of the lives they led. We see the fantastic machinery that changed the face of Britain and made her the workshop of the world. I have enjoyed today . Have you? This morning I ripped off my thought for the day and it said "Enjoy your life in every moment, observe what you have now and truly live in your surroundings". Well I enjoyed my day out if the last of the early Autumn sun, I looked around and enjoyed every minute of my tour of the mill and every mouthful of my breakfast that was cooked for me. Not a huge journey. Not to something with a wow factor but nevertheless a worthwhile trip out to somewhere special. Special if you like me enjoy industrial history .

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