on the way to work #12

This section of the R Derwent is at Milford and is about halfway along my journey to work. The weir was built in 1799 as part of a water mill for fulling cloth and an adjacent dyehouse. The Strutt family, who built most of the mills along the river bought the site and turned it into a foundry and gas works in the 19th century. From 1934 the site expanded its foundry and was the birth of part of the Company I work for. I visited the foundry often and the canteen had a good view of the weir. The foundry became outdated as cast iron was replaced by copper and aluminium and we closed it in 2001. It's apartments now, with nice views.

The old foundrymen always said if you took the old discarded iron out of the river it would fall by about 4 feet. Those guys were real characters who loved working in the hot foundry conditions because, as they put it, they were born with sand in their boots. Many of them preferred to leave rather than transfer 2 miles up the road to a modern, light, clean factory.