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Bridge Street, Belper is pictured above left, probably at the turn of the last century, looking from the triangle towards the East Mill and the river.

The bridge in the distance is covered with ivy and there is a beautiful clock tower to the left, which, sadly, is no longer there.

Bridge Street, because of its proximity to the Derwent and its weir became the site of an entire complex of textile mills.

The first mill, the South Mill, was built in 1776; and the North Mill, originally constructed 1784-86, was rebuilt in 1804 by William Strutt on the lower storeys of the earlier mill destroyed by fire in 1803, embodying the knowledge accumulated from earlier experiments he had made into fire-resistant mill structures. Its iron frame making it a technological marvel for that time.

Completing the earlier stages of the mill complex was the West Mill with its attractive clock tower in 1797, and, in 1813, the Round Mill, said to have been modelled on the idea of the Panopticon of Samuel and Jeremy Bentham.

The final addition, the East Mill, totally overshadowing the North Mill to this day, is a seven-storey building with four corner turrets. It was constructed by the English Sewing Cotton Company in 1912 in the distinctive Accrington red-brick, which had by this time become the preferred building material for textile mills. Built around a freestanding steel frame it represented a significant advance on William Strutt’s structures, which still relied on the walls of the building to support them.

The Gang Way, (the ivy covered bridge in the photograph), once joined the North Mill and the West Mill (which was demolished in 1962). From end to end the archway is punctuated with gun embrasures or musket holes covering both approaches and intended to protect the West Mill counting house from Luddites who were marauding through the area smashing Spinning Jennies and were expected to descend on the town and its mills. In the event they surprisingly headed eastwards before reaching the town, leaving Nottingham to feel their wrath, and sparing Belper and its mills.

Taken together, this complex of mills on the banks of the Derwent can be said to chart the evolution of mill design from the traditional stone and timber structures through to the first steps in fire protection and onto the full use of iron and brick-arched fire-proofing. Many architectural historians also point to the East Mill, entirely justifiably some would say, as a forerunner of the later skyscrapers that now populate the city skylines throughout the world.

Regrettably, few of the buildings to the West of the site, including the clock tower, survived the demolitions of the 1950s and 60s.

• Derbyshire then and now

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