The River Derwent is a dominant feature of the Derbyshire  landscape from the Ladybower Reservoir to where it joins the River Trent just south of Derby. This river is noted for the sheer power and volume of water it carries: in the 1720s Daniel Defoe observed ‘the Derwent is a frightful creature when the hills load her current with water'. It was to take advantage of potency of this water power that Sir Richard Arkwright began to establish his cotton mills on this river at Cromford in 1771. Within a few years a huge complex of factory buildings had grown up here.

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