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driving the mill Compared with designing the engine, the rest was ridiculously easy. Selecting a point about three quarters of a mile from the mill where the valley narrowed to almost ravine-like proportions, the Dakeynes built a dam across Sydnope Brook. By taking water from the surface of the dam they gained an additional 30 ft head above the brook level. A section from the 1839 Tithe Map for the Township of Darley and the Lordship of Little Rowsley Water from the dam was diverted through a channel in the wall into a leat (usually called a goit in Derbyshire). Although the end of the goit is not shown on the map above, the large ponds (numbered 1001 and 1009) that James and Edward constructed along the line of the goit wherever the topography permitted it are clearly seen. These are some 70 to 80 feet higher than the dams in the valley below, the Regulator and Fancy, respectively 982 and 977. The ponds along the countour line were in fact reservoirs necessarily very shallow. The line of the goit can be followed along to the bottom left of the map and a small area of water,1250, which is the engine head, Moss Castle. Although the mill was on the north side of the brook, the Dakeynes chose to follow a much longer contour along the other side of the valley to avoid having to cut through the houses to the north of the Regulator and to get the water close to its point of use, the old cotton mill. The small building in field 1249 is the engine house and the high pressure pipe from Moss Castle is clearly seen. Because the water discharged from the disc engine was to be reused on the triple wheels, the engine house had to be located part way up the hillside at the same elevation as the penstock. This of course accounts for the extraordinary distance between the engine house and the cotton mill. The line between the two indicates the position of the launder carrying the water across to the main wheels.  The drive from the engine house must have presented problems, not only because of its inordinate length but also because the mill was appreciably lower than the disc engine. The photograph on the right shows the engine house as a dark shadow behind and above the mill forge and foundry. This is the only known photograph of the engine house. In the latter part of the 19th century, the forge had been used as a mineral water factory. Very little is known of the engine itself other than from the practically incomprehensible documentation supporting the patent. The main castings were made at the Morley Park foundry near Heage. Weighing seven tons, it was clearly a substantial piece of machinery. The difficulties of manufacturing the disc engine, with its spherical surfaces and need for tight tolerances, are unimaginable. But somehow brothers did it. At a head of 96 feet it generated 35 horsepower. An author writing in 1865 who had seen the engine many times but who on his own admission totally failed to comprehend how it worked, said that the crank extended below the engine. It is fairly unlikely that the engine was installed upside down and what he saw was probably a crank drive connecting to a lineshaft crossing the road to the cotton mill. The engine house is at the top of a very substantial retaining wall which may well have been built to allow excavation of the lower part of the hillside down to road level and thus create space for a mechanism to reduce the elevation of the drive line. | | |
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