History pages
- History map and tour
- Lower Street Farm
- Methodist Chapel
- Reading Room
- The Church
- The Gables
- The Hall
- The Water Mill
- The Well
- The Yew Tree
- Village School
Quicklinks
The water driven corn mill
History records a mill at Doveridge at least as far back as the Domesday Book of 1086. Though the mill has gone one can still detect evidence of the mill outflow and the outline of the mill pond.
Described as a ‘water corn mill’ in the 1894 Doveridge Hall sales catalogue it is marked on an estate map of 1901 as ‘disused’. At some point one of the outbuildings was converted into a turbine house which housed a water turbine complete with pump, dynamo by Drake and Gorham, large oil engine, two large galvanised water cisterns, charging board and accumulator room with 108 cells which was used to generate electricity for Doveridge Hall, one of the first houses in the area to be lit by electricity.
In its day the mill cottage was considered to be ‘picturesque’ and Lord Hindlip commissioned the artist Benjamin Williams Leader to capture the scene on canvas. A.D. Hamersley produced a number of watercolours of the mill in the 1890s and it provided the subject of an early photograph by Derbyshire photographer Richard Keene in 1879.
The remains of the mill were finally demolished in the early 1970s, a sad loss to the history and character of the village.