| Administrative History | Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), cotton manufacturer, was born in Preston, Lancashire. After an early career as a barber, perukier and then publican, he began to develop cotton spinning machinery, inventing the "water frame" in 1769. He formed a company to exploit his patents, and went into partnership with Samuel Need of Nottingham (1718-1781) and Jedediah Strutt of Derby (1726-1797). The mills founded by the company in the Derwent Valley became a World Heritage Site in 2001.
Arkwright leased the land for his mill at Lumford, Bakewell, from Philip Gell of Hopton in 1778. The building had probably been erected by the end of the year, and was certainly in operation by 1783. However, the machinery that powered the mill affected the fishing further downstream, and interrupted the supply of water to a corn mill owned by the Duke of Rutland, the Lord of the Manor of Bakewell. Although the subsequent legal dispute was resolved in the Duke's favour in 1786, further disagreements about the use of the river went on into the nineteenth century.
Arkwright's son, Richard Arkwright (1755-1843) purchased the freehold for the site from the Gells in 1798. His son, Robert, made several attempts to sell the site between 1830 and 1840; Robert's son Godfrey succeeded in doing so in 1860, when it was purchased by the Duke of Devonshire. At least some of the mill's historic records remained in Arkwright family hands: these wage books were sold to a private collector when the estate of William Arkwright of Sutton Scarsdale was auctioned in 1919.
The wage books are some of the earliest surviving records for any of the Richard Arkwright Company mills, and demonstrate the differentiation between types of workers, reflected in a wide variation in rates of pay. Some workers are grouped together by place of origin as "Youlgreave pickers"; an entry for 10-17 June 1786 mentions "Bakewell pickers", providing evidence that these wage books refer to the Bakewell mill, rather than any other. The books cover the period 1786 to 1811, with significant gaps. It may be that some of the other volumes in the series remained at the mill after the sale in 1860, and were destroyed by the fire of 1868.
Sources:
entries for Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) in the Dictionary of National Biography and Encyclopaedia Britannica
M H Mackenzie "The Bakewell Cotton Mill and the Arkwrights" in the Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society vol LXXIX (1959) pp61-80
Robert Thornhill "The Arkwright Cotton Mill at Bakewell" (including photographs) in the Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society vol LXXIX (1959) pp81-87 |
| Custodial History | These items were donated by T Metcalf Esq in 1929 to Chesterfield Borough Council for the proposed Tapton House Museum. The Borough Council decided to turn Tapton House into a school, rather than a museum, and the volumes were retained at Chesterfield Library. They were transferred from the library to Derbyshire Record Office in March 2008. |