Cromford Mill

Cromford Mill

Cromford Mill
Location within Derbyshire
Cotton
Spinning Mill (Water frame)
Structural system	Stone
Owner	Arkwright
Coordinates	53°06′32″N 1°33′22″W / 53.1090°N 1.5560°W / 53.1090; -1.5560
Construction
Built	1772
Employees	200
Floor count	5
Design team
Awards and prizes and listings	Grade 1 listed

Cromford Mill was the first water-powered cotton spinning mill developed by Richard Arkwright in 1771 in Cromford, Derbyshire, England, which laid the foundation of his fortune and was quickly copied by mills in Lancashire, Germany and the United States. It forms the centrepiece of the Derwent Valley Mills, now a World Heritage Site. The mill structure is classified as a Grade I listed building, it was first classified in June 1950.

Following the invention of the flying shuttle for weaving cotton in 1733 the demand for spun cotton increased enormously in England. Machines for carding and spinning had already been developed but were inefficient. Spun cotton was also produced by means of the spinning jenny but was insufficiently strong to form the warp of a fabric, for which it was the practise to use linen thread, producing a type of cloth known as fustian. In 1769, Richard Arkwright patented a water frame to use the extra power of a water mill after he had set up a horse powered mill in Nottingham.

He chose the site at Cromford because it had year-round supply of warm water from the Cromford Sough which drained water from nearby Wirksworth lead mines, together with Bonsall Brook. Here he built a five-storey mill, with the backing of Jedediah Strutt (who he met in a Nottingham bank via Ichabod Wright), Samuel Need and John Smalley. Starting from 1772, he ran the mills day and night with two twelve-hour shifts.

He started with 200 workers, more than the locality could provide, so he built housing for them nearby, one of the first manufacturers to do so. Most of the employees were women and children, the youngest being only seven years old. Later, the minimum age was raised to ten and the children were given six hours of education a week, so that they could do the record-keeping that their illiterate parents could not.