An historical tour of the village led by Heather Eaton
Milford has an incredibly rich industrial heritage, and is part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, since its former mills were some of the first mechanised industrial spinning factories in the world at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Jedediah Strutt and his successors built almost all the stone buildings in the village in the period 1780-1850 to provide accommodation and facilities for the workers in their huge mills, which dominated Milford.
You can undertake your own historical tour of the village by looking at the Interpretation Panels and Information Points that have been installed throughout Milford & Makeney.
The summary of the history of Milford & Makeney at the bottom of the page is copied from the Milford page of the Derwent Valley Mills website.
An historical tour of the village which takes in Andy Whitaker’s West Terrace cottage
The Strutts North Mill Museum & Belper Historical Society run monthly historical guided walking tours and talks covering the Belper area, and there are two covering Milford this year – see here for the 2024 schedule.
There are other pages on this website covering the past, links to which are highlighted below. There is a page covering the Derwent Valley Mills, including a couple of fascinating animations with commentary of the old South Mill in Milford, which covered the current Soi Kitchen building and Nealies and Strutt Arms car parks. There is a page with the latest theories of the purpose of The Tower on Sunny Hill. There is a page covering some surprising historical firsts for the village, and another explaining how Milford got its nickname of “Treacle City“. There is a page full of the memories of present and former residents, including a detailed account of a large Edwardian wedding between two residents in 1907, which give fascinating insights into what life was like in that era. In another page, a resident of 13 Chevin Road describes the story of a grisly murder , long since forgotten, that took place in the same residence in Victorian times. There are two Derbyshire Life articles from 2011 and 2015 which cover the history of the village and a page giving details of the 57 Milford men who lost their lives in World War 1.
More recent history is covered in the archive of The Treacle City News, a village newsletter which ran in the 1980’s, there is a photo archive of recent Milford & Makeney May Day parades, and an article reporting the burst of the main aqueduct from Ladybower Reservoir which flooded the village in 2019.
Summary of the History of Milford & Makeney, copied from the The Derwent Valley Mills website
A SHORT HISTORY OF MILFORD AND MAKENEY
The earliest references to Milford and neighbouring Makeney are made in the Domesday Book of 1087, when there was a ford crossing for the River Derwent at this point. Industry clustered close to this crossing long before the Strutt family came to run their mills in Milford, in fact the area was known as New Mills for centuries.
The Duke of Devonshire’s lands came as far as the village, and the Duchy owned land here including a corn mill powered by the river. There was a chain ferry across the Derwent, which was a precarious crossing, eventually replaced by a toll bridge built by William Strutt, eldest son of Jedidiah.
Jedidiah was one of the entrepreneurs who, by harnessing waterpower, developed the factory system and, for the first time, mass production. Before then people made thread by hand. Once mills and factories were built, they housed machines which were fast and efficient and could run continually, making thread more plentiful and cheaper. The production of cheaper cloth enabled everyone, not just the wealthy, to buy more cloth and our modern fashion industry was founded.
Jedidiah had financed Richard Arkwright and was a partner in his Cromford Mill before building his own mills at Belper from 1776. From 1781 he began buying land in Milford, and it wasn’t long before mills and a mill-worker community had been established in the village.
These included a bleaching mill and a dye-works, where the world renowned ‘Turkey Red’ dye was developed and used. A school was built as part of the complex from 1819, and is one of the county’s oldest-surviving school buildings still in their original use.
Better valley transport came in 1838-40, with a Stephenson-built railway – but it by-passed Milford through the second-longest railway tunnel in the world (at the time). The tunnel entrance can be seen from Chevin Road and is an impressive stone archway.
At Makeney, Dark Lane is believed to be the route which brought Mary Queen of Scots in September 1569 past the Holly Bush Inn on her way to Tutbury Castle from Wingfield Manor. Nearby, in 1818, Anthony Radford Strutt bought a farmhouse and rebuilt it. His great-nephew Herbert Strutt enlarged into a mansion, now known as the Makeney Hall Hotel.
Milford and Makeney are still beautiful villages and although much of the mill site was demolished in 1964, historic features can still be found around every corner.
