Charted Territory

Thanks to pioneering work by Richard Arkwright, Jedediah Strutt, the Lombe brothers and others, the essential ingredients of factory production were successfully combined. By the 18th century water power had been applied and successfully used for the first time on a relatively large scale. Not only was silk throwing and cotton spinning revolutionised with dramatic consequences for the British economy, the Arkwright model system also informed and inspired developments in other countries and industries.

Born out of the Great Place Scheme, funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England, a dedicated group of local volunteers catalogued over 200 historic maps and plans of the World Heritage Site held at Derbyshire Record Office. Over 40 of these maps have been digitised to make them easily accessible to researchers.

Many of the maps featured are from the archive of the Strutt family who owned a large amount of land and property in the area.

Jedediah Strutt (1726-1792) established silk mills in Derby and cotton mills at Milford and Belper.

Through these maps we see the expansion of the mills and communities along Derbyshire's Derwent Valley. Cottages on Long Row were built (1792-1797) by the Strutt family to house employees who worked at their mills in Belper.

Maps were often designed to be attractive as well as useful. This hand-coloured map of Willersley at Cromford, dated 1759, shows the lands owned by Edwin Lascelles. The land was bought by Sir Richard Arkwright in 1782, who had Willersley Castle built just to the north of Upper Holm and Far Holm.

Notice the title 'cartouche', the scale with drawing compass, the star-shaped rose compass and stylised buildings.

This early 19th century map shows the route of the River Derwent through Belper before the need for large quantities of water to work the waterwheels in the Strutt mills led to the building of the Horseshoe Weir in 1797. The pink area shows the land flooded when the weir was created thus changing the landscape around the river through what is now the Belper River Gardens.

Many of the Strutt estate maps were working maps, with additions made over time. The 1829 addition to this 1820 map shows in red the planned route for the railway (built 1838-1840), with a diversion for the river and for the road from Duffield to Milford.

In the days before satellites and computers, accurately surveying land was a difficult process. Mistakes were sometimes made.

This 1792 estate map of Milford, created when the riverbanks were inaccessible, points out an error in the alignment of the River Derwent: “This part of the River was drawn by guess, before the Land on either side was bought or measured, and is all this wrong.”

In the 20th century the Ordnance Survey aimed to produce maps which were completely accurate. This involved detailed survey work: photographs from the late 1940s and early 1950s show men using a hand held arrow to indicate precise points with a grid reference given in the image.