the dakeynes and their mills
Very few small landowners recognised the value of the streams that ran through their land. But Abraham Flint, a farmer and mineral agent in Toadhole (then the name for Two Dales), realized that the stream from Ladygrove down at the bottom of his steep fields was a potential source of power. In 1785 he built a 400 spindle cotton mill on what is Sydnope Brook. But his ambitions were not realised - two years later he was forced to offer the mill for sale. It was bought by a local landowner Daniel Dakeyne. Abraham Flint moved to Rocester where, it is believed, he was a manager at the cotton mill owned by Sir Richard Arkwright.
Daniel Dakeyne, a member of a well known Derbyshire family, was born at Knabb House, Two Dales in 1733. His venture into textile manufacture was clearly a success - amply demonstrated by the fine houses that he and his family built during this period and by the new 2000 spindle flax mill erected adjacent to the cotton mill. In accordance with usual practice, Flint had built his cotton mill at right angles to the stream, thus avoiding the need any bevel gearing to tranmit the drive. But Dakeyne's new mill was built parallel to and well away from the stream at the end of the cotton mill. It consisted of two interlinked blocks, one of two storeys and one of three, a total of some 18000 square feet, twice the size of the old cotton mill.
The cotton mill retained its own water supply from two small dams just upstream. For the flax mill Dakeyne built two large dams, the Regulator and Fancy. These were necessarily higher up the valley than the original dams.
A goit (the Derbyshire term for leat) carried water some 400 feet from the lower dam to the mill. As was the case with the two smaller dams, the upper dam acted as a reservoir. Two 30 ft diameter water wheels powered the mill.
Daniel's flax mill (2004)
A separate house was built to accommodate at least one hundred children. However the Dakeynes were relatively benign employers at least in comparison with some of the other Derbyshire mill owners.
Despite the, or perhaps because of, the massive investment all this required, Daniel Dakeyne was under increasing financial pressure. On 6 October 1801 he and three of his sons were declared bankrupt. The whole estate including the mills and the splendid houses were offered for sale the following year. But because so few sales were actually achieved there was a second auction in 1804.
Daniel's will, written in 1815, left a legacy to all the employees in the mill at the time of his death. He clearly had some continuing interest despite being a bankrupt. Why this should be so must be that his youngest son James, in partnership with his older brother Edward, had been running the mill since at least 1826 and probably long before. Furthermore by 1838 at the very latest James had acquired the freehold of much of the original estate, mills, houses, and land.
The most probable explanation for this apparent reversal in the family fortunes is that the estate never left their hands - or at least James' hands. The day before the date of the 1804 sale there was to be a meeting of the creditors and assignees of a mortgage on the estate to agree the value of the estate. This suggests the creditors of Daniel Dakeyne & Sons did not anticipate an outright sale the next day and their only way of recovering their losses was to offer a mortgage if the right man could be found - and that man was James (who was not a partner in Daniel Dakeyne & Sons and thus was not involved in the bankruptcy proceedings).
So successful was the business that it enabled James to repay the mortgage and, with his brother Edward, to build a large extension to the flax mill in 1826. It was this new mill that led to the Da
keyne disc engine.
The photograph on the left, taken around the beginning of the 20th century, shows the mill complex largely unchanged since the brothers built their new mill.
Daniel's three story flax mill is on the right, and the two storey block immediately in front of the bell tower is the original cotton mill bought by him. To the left is the new wing built by Edward and James in 1826.
On the right hand margin of the photo above the mill are the ruins of the Chidren's House
The 1826 mill built by Charles and Edward The windows & roof covering are recent as are the loading bays