Monument record MDR5036 - Stone sawmill (remains of), Pearce Lane, Wingerworth

SK 397 671 Pearce Lane, Sawmill. Remains of a stone-built water-powered sawmill, probably of 19th century date. Mr. J. Adlington of Stubbing Court has photos of the mill in operation. (1) The saw mill was built sometime between 1819 and 1842 and was demolished in c. 1920. The site was overgrown in 1972, but the footings of machinery and the millrace were still visible in woodland. (2) Stone Saw Mill, SK 367 671. Near Stubbing, Wingerworth, there are the remains of a water-powered stone saw mill, powered by the lowest of the three dams that once existed in the area. The dam has now been drained but the wall is mainly intact. There is a large amount of random stonework below the dam. (3) This was a water-powered mill for sawing stone quarried at Bole Hill (and Stone Edge, at least in the earlier days of the mill). It is clearly shown on the Wingerworth Tithe Map of 1843. It is described in an auction catalogue of June 1920 as a brick and stone building together with store sheds; water power was available from the adjacent mill pond (named Pearce Pond in 1843). There was also a small cottage on the site in the 19th century, housing a stone sawyer. The mill was still in operation in 1912, so it may have been brought to a standstill by the First World War. The earliest reference so far to the mill is an advertisement in the Derbyshire Courier of April 11 1829 in which stone merchant Jesse Rutherford of Bole Hill Farm, who operated both quarries, announced that he had added to his works at Wingerworth 'the Sawing and Manufacture (by New Patent Machinery) of Marble and Stone Chimney Pieces, Monuments, Mortars, &c. &c.'. The mill is not shown on a map of 1819, but the pond appears both on that map and on an earlier map of 1758. The purpose of the pond at that earlier period is not known. The mill site is now occupied by a small wood, but stone footings for machinery, the stonework for a sluice on Tricket Brook at the west side, and a channel on the north side which appears to have housed a waterwheel still survive, as do a partly overgrown trackway leading into the site from the now blocked-off section of Hillhouses Lane across a bridge over the brook and a raised trackway crossing a field (centred at about SK 3675 6645) above Bolehill Farm along which stone was evidently hauled from the quarry to the mill. Several photographs of the site exist, including one from an early 20th century postcard showing the outside of the buildings. (4) On-going excavations [in 2011] at the stone saw mill near Wingerworth have revealed footings and a chimney hearth. Research of archive records has shown that the site commenced with conventional water power, later employing the use of a steam engine, and a water turbine may have been involved at a later date. (5) North East Derbyshire Industrial Archaeology Society began work on surveying, excavating and recording the Wingerworth stone sawing mill in April 2011 with work continuing on site one day a week. There is evidence to suggest that the site was used for iron working before the stone mill was built and that the pond may predate Stubbing Great Pond. Documentary research has revealed that the stone was used in some prestigious buildings; Curzon Street Station in Birmingham, for example. (6)