Site record MDR10170 - Wingerworth Mill (site of), Mill Lane, Wingerworth

An unnamed mill, on a tributary of the River Rother, is shown here on Burdett's map of 1767. On both Greenwood's 1825 map and the first issue of the Ordnance maps in 1840 it is called 'Wingerworth Mill'. It is still marked on the 1908 Ordnance map as 'mill'. Arthur and William Robinson were millers in 1829-35 and the mill was still working in 1912, when Edmund Revell was the miller. At that time it is listed as 'worked by water and steam'. No evidence of the mill can now be seen. (1) A corn mill probably existed on this site from medieval times. A rental of Wingerworth manor in 1427 includes the entry 'firma molendinorum (farm of the mills) 30s'. A more positive indication is provided by a statement of the manor boundaries in 1632. The boundaries to begin with 'extend themselves from the water milne there along the water of Rother …' and finally 'unto a certain water deviding the lordshipe of Walton and Wingerworth aforesaid [ie Birdholme Brook] running into the River of Rother, and so a longe as the water of Rother unto the afore water milne'. A corn mill in Wingerworth is recorded in a Scarsdale survey of 1652 and is recorded in estate surveys of the 18th to 20th centuries. In a sale catalogue of 1920 the corn mill was stated to contain three pairs of stones and an overshot waterwheel. It is thought that the mill fell into disuse and ruin not many years after that, although the buildings were used temporarily as a timber sawmill (not using water power) around 1950. According to a local informant, both the mill and the neighbouring Mill Farm were demolished in 1953 to make way for the railway siding into Avenue carbonisation plant. The mill buildings are shown in outline on various large-scale plans, including a Midland Railway plan of 1903 in the Derbyshire Record Office. Water was supplied from a pond immediately east of the mill, fed by a long goit branching off Redleadmill Brook west of Derby Road, just below the red-lead mill site. (2)