The Romping Lion

The story of the Dakeyne Disc Engine
in the beginning
the lion that roared
the dakeynes and their mills
the search for power
the disc engine
driving the mill
down the mine
the last water engine
into the steam age
disc engines at work
made by the million
explosive force
reborn in america - 1996
back to the mill
the legacy in the dales
NEW -animation of engine
contact
NEW - book in publication
 
 
the lion that roared
 
 
In those permanently sunlit days before World War 2 before I was old enough to go to school, my grandfather, Philip Wright, often used to take me a walk down into Two Dales, a village some 2 miles north of Matlock.  From there we would walk past the huge flour mill into Ladygrove, a dark and precipitous valley which a ran up to the surrounding moors.
 
Invariably we would pause by the small terraced cottages just before the mill that loomed above them. Collectively known as Brookbottom, the end cottage was once a grocer's shop.More importantly it was the place where my grandfather had been born in 1859. The mill had not always been a flour mill.  In those days it was owned by the Dakeynes and manufactured flax. Philip's father had worked there as a flax dresser whilst my great grandmother ran the shop. I could not believe so many people lived in that little house.
                                                                                               Brookbottom in the early twentieth century         
 
The next stop was at the other end of the mill where a huge pile of beautifully dressed gritstone lay out the side of the lane.  This, I was told, was what was left of the engine house. Grandfather never forgot to point out where the line shaft which drove me machinery in what he called the old mill had crossed the road.  He remembered the engine working.  Nobody ever saw it but the village boys were in awe of the great roar that it emitted as it worked.  They called it the "Romping Lion".  

 

We walked up into Ladygrove past the "Regulator" and the "Fancy", two of the dams that belonged to the mill, and reversing our direction of travel, climbed up the side of the valley to the top of the "Holt" field. From here, directly above the mill, there was a glorious view of the Derwent valley. Much more interesting though was "Moss Castle", a semicircular embankment built into the hillside.

 

                                                                                  Moss Castle

 

 

 

Curious though a boy of four may be, I never really found out what the Romping Lion was. The days of the Dakeynes were long gone.  But their house, the Holt, was like the mill, a permanent memorial. It was however a very clear that they were an important family. 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed they had their own bank and issued their own Banknotes.  What is more, Mrs Davenport at the Blacksmith's Arms  had one 

hanging in a frame behind the bar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was not until 1971 when the widely respected industrial archaeologist, Frank Nixon, published a book about Derbyshire that I realized the Romping Lion was something quite different.It was neither a water wheel nor a turbine. Nixon called this "ingenious machine" a "disc engine" adding that its most striking characteristic was the difficulty in describing it. He did not try.

 

Some twenty years later when I retired I thought I might at least understand its mysteries. To my amazement nobody in the intervening years had published anything about it. Certainly it had been touched on in various books but all implied, as had Nixon himself, that the dams at the bottom of Ladygrove supplied the water for the disc engine.  I realized this could not be true - there

could not be the 96ft head quoted.

 

Moss Castle, immediately above the mill, must have been the source of water for the engine.  And the large ponds constructed on the flank of the hill, all interconnected by a water channel, that I had seen as a child must have provided the water for Moss Castle.

 

The Derbyshire Record Office immediately provided the answer.  The 1839 Tithe Map showed Moss Castle to be the "Engine Head".  Down below in the valley was the mill and across the road from it was the "Engine House". A thin line on the map connected the Engine Head, the Engine House and Mill.