PAPPLEWICK MILLS
It is interesting how sometimes I set out to explore a particular route or area to end up discovering something else of similar or more interest than the original intention. Such was the case when during the early afternoon of Tuesday the 23rd February 2015 I set out in the car with ‘NoNames’ intent on doing a little circular stroll taking in the Linby Trail and Newstead Abbey grounds. This was meant to serve three purposes; firstly I’d just bought a new 20 litre rucksack that I needed to try out in the field, secondly I could write about the Linby Trail as part of my Trail Trekking program, and thirdly, armed with my bridge camera and a neutral density filter I could get a few long exposure shots of the famous waterfall at Newstead Abbey. Ultimately the stroll served all three purposes well, but I was unprepared for an unexpected discovery I was about to make.
On driving through the village I considered it unwise to park at the roadside in Linby, and so continued out of the village and parked in a layby just before the road entered Papplewick. At the side of the layby is a small woodland area, and on deciding that this would be the best option to allow ‘NoNames’ a run around off his lead before we attempt the designated route, we entered. Immediately I was confronted by signage telling a brief story of the area. I was intrigued, and yearned to learn more. A wander through took us to a footpath that allowed us to get close to our designated start point without much roadside walking. We completed the designated walk and achieved what I’d planned, but I set my mind on one day coming back to this woodland to explore and learn more. So it happened that the very next day ‘NoNames’ and I returned.
Papplewick and its neighbour, Linby may once have suited titles along the lines of ‘quintessential traditional English villages in the heart of the countryside’, but that would have been a long time ago. Although both villages still retain much of their traditional and quintessential character nowadays they are possibly more aptly titled as ‘suburbs of Hucknall’. Nevertheless, if casting our minds back some 200 to 300 years ago, things were rather different, back then they were indeed ‘quintessential traditional English villages in the heart of the countryside’ and even today there is a reasonable band of ‘green belt’ land between the two. Through this ‘green belt’ land runs the River Leen, which rises through a series of springs within the Robin Hood Hills close to Annesley then flows through the grounds of Newstead Abbey before reaching this point between Linby and Papplewick; from here it then continues through Nottingham and its suburbs before running into the River Trent in the Meadows area of Nottingham, covering a total distance of around 15 miles.
You may be asking why I’m telling you this; I’m telling you this because it is significant when looking at the history of this particular area of Nottinghamshire.
A few centuries ago the River Leen was a big draw for the building of mills that could utilise the river’s energy for driving their water wheels; many rivers throughout the area, and indeed the whole country suffered a similar fate, but none so much as the River Leen. Indeed the first recorded reference of a water-powered mill dates back to 1232 as, ‘by the middle of the town of Lindeby to the mill of the same town, which is on the water of the Leen’. From 1615 to 1773 iron refining was happening at Bulwell Forge, otherwise known as Forge Mill, which was once located within the Papplewick parish. 
During the latter part of the 18th Century it was commonplace to hear that the River Leen had along its length more mills than any similar stretch of water in the country. Apparently 70 acres of water control was constructed along its course to drive the mill wheels, and one of the largest water wheels measuring 44 feet in diameter (that’s nearly 13.5 metres) was in use at Papplewick.
On returning to this woodland and following a little online research I learned that the woods are part of the Moor Pond Woods project, now managed by local authorities and volunteers as a wildlife, leisure, and industrial heritage area. This project has now been ongoing for some time, but fairly new when compared to many other wildlife and leisure sites in the area. Of course this was not always so; the Moor Pond Woods were once a collection of reservoirs and water courses specifically designed for industrial use to help power the cotton mills of George Robinson and his family who began their empire when George and his associate, David Melvin, began bleaching and cleaning cotton at Bulwell during 1742. The revenue gained from this enterprise helped to set up the Robinson’s empire when they began converting corn mills and also building new mills around 1776, all on the River Leen. The Robinson family had two warehouses in Nottingham and at one point employed 800 people along the Leen Valley.
Unfortunately the Robinson’s empire did not last as long as one might expect as they were hampered by the fifth Lord Byron who was demanding loyalty payments from the Robinsons for using the River Leen which, as I mentioned earlier, passed through his grounds at Newstead Abbey. In order to force the family to honour those payment he began damming the lower lake at Newstead, refusing to allow them to regulate the flow of water; he even threatened to release the water in one go and cause a, ‘sudden violent eruption of water…’, which would have resulted in serious damage to their workings. The case was eventually heard in court but the Robinsons were unable to recover damages because Byron pleaded poverty. Due to the water shortage the Robinsons decided to purchase a steam engine; this was from Messrs. Boulton and Watt of Birmingham in 1785 which was installed at their mill at what is now Grange Farm, and this became the first rotative steam engine in use in a cotton mill anywhere in the world. In 1828 the Robinson cotton spinning enterprise came to an end, and some time later most of the disused mills were demolished.
What remains of the water workings of the Robinson Mills is now Moor Pond Wood and Papplewick Dam Wood. Traces of the former workings can easily be found, and renovation work is an ongoing concern intended on restoring as much of the water channel features and reservoirs as possible whilst still retaining a suitable area for wildlife and visitors. At the far north of the area – alongside the layby on the B6011 Linby Lane where I parked can be found a pond that I think today is referred to as Papplewick Dam, on the south of the pond a weir allows water from the dam (fed by the River Leen) to fall into the wooded valley below and permit continuation of the river. The valley floor is on a lower level than the entrance 
to the wood against the layby; during the years of the Robinson mills this whole valley was flooded as a water supply for the mills. Directly opposite the layby the building that was once Robinson’s Castle Mill (Top Mill) remains now for residential use; the water reservoir once came right up to this building, its waters held by a dam, and the original road ran along the top of this dam. The River Leen then passed beneath the mill to power its water wheel.
If you travel up the road a hundred yards or so towards Papplewick village (to the left of the Castle Mill building) a kissing-gate allows access into the remainder of the Moor Pond Woods project. Within this woodland can be seen many traces of the former water control workings, including a few more ponds; the Robinson Mills once extended further south to Bestwood. The far south of the former mills waterworks, after crossing another lane (Papplewick Lane), is known as Grange Cottages Wood, and also part of the Moor Pond Woods project. The whole area has a series of numbered posts that correspond to an audio trail that can be downloaded from the Moor Pond Wood Group website at http://moorpond.papplewick.org/audio-trail.html.
The images connected to this blog post can also be found at Doorstep Discovery on Facebook.
If you are at all interested in industrial heritage I do recommend you pay the area a visit; I found it quite fascinating once I started researching its history, just a small snippet of it included within my writing.
Doorstep Discovery 