the last water engine
Knabb House was the original Dakeyne family home. High up on the northern flank of Ladygrove, it looks down on the mill below.
Daniel continued to live here after the bankruptcy. Officially the house belonged to John, his eldest son, an attorney who had not been involved in the bankruptcy proceedings.
Stephen Glover, in his gazetteer of Derbyshire, was very enthusiastic about the prospects for the disc engine foreseeing its use in all manner of applications, domestic as well as industrial, not only as a prime mover but also as a pump.
He stated that John Dakeyne had commissioned a disc engine to drive the bellows of organ in the ballroom in Knabb House. In the late 19th centurythe organ was taken out of the house and burnt in the garden. After the the Second World War some gears were found by a then resident digging in the grounds. These could well have been from the engine, although the truth is that there is no certainty that it was ever completed in the first place.
The Dakeynes never built another engine and that should have been the end of the story. Astonishingly it wasn't. Basing their designs on the Dakeyne patent, other engineers were to build several hundred engines over the next two decades!