This is an easily accessible site by public transport, with trains running hourly from Derby up to Matlock. For my visit, I disembarked at Whatstandwell and crossed the footbridge which leads immediately onto the Cromford Canal, built between 1789 and 1794 to transport goods manufactured by the mills. The canal is narrow here and covered in a thick mat of algae but has a well-maintained footpath that I followed all the way to the end of the canal at the village of Cromford, a pleasant walk of around three miles mostly through woodland. En route there are various small original bridges passing over the canal as well as aqueducts that take the canal over the railway and the River Derwent. The Leawood Pump House (dating to 1849) was built to transfer water from the river to the canal and is currently closed for repairs but there are apparently demonstrations of the restored steam-powered pump when it is open. Further along the canal, High Peak Junction was where goods were transferred from the canal to the railway (opened 1830) that travelled through the Peak District to Buxton then on to Manchester and was the steepest adhesion railway in the country. This railway was closed by the Beeching cuts of the 1960s and its route is now a hiking trail but the start of the line here has preserved station buildings, section of track, signals, and a railway car with an audio tour available to explain the history. The rest of the canal parallels the surviving railway line to Matlock until it reaches its end at Cromford, where there are further original buildings of the wharf used for loading up the products of the mills and, in modern times, the opportunity to take a ride on a narrowboat down the canal back to High Peak Junction.

Cromford feels like the core of this site and has its own railway station so could be visited in isolation. St Mary’s Church was built in the late 18th Century by the river and is where many of the Arkwright family who owned the mills are buried. From the bridge next to the church, the Arkwright family home of Willersley Castle can be seen. This was a hotel in recent years but closed down due to the pandemic in 2020 and was currently up for sale. Across the river are the Cromford Mills, where Richard Arkwright built the first water-powered cotton mill in 1771 and so began a revolution in textile manufacturing that would transform Britain. The courtyard of the mill complex is free to access and features a range of hands-on demonstrations recreating mill technology, the foundations of some demolished buildings and an 18th Century weir although the original watercourse was lost long ago. The mill buildings themselves are authentic but were repurposed as a colour works for producing dyes and paints in the 20th Century and so were greatly contaminated with lead chromate by the time the site was abandoned in 1979. They were saved from demolition in large part thanks to a local charity called the Arkwright Society that currently owns the site. The insides of some buildings can be accessed by guided tour whilst others host arts and crafts businesses with a restaurant also on site.

Across the road from the mill complex is the mill manager’s house, which is now a holiday cottage. A short way further along the road, past a very busy crossroads with confusing traffic lights, is the village of Cromford. Constructed for the workers of the mills in the late 18th Century, there are a large number of well-preserved cottages here along with the Greyhound Inn, Methodist Church, and a large pond that provided water for the mills. Further still along the road, the Masson Mills complex dates to 1783 although many of the buildings on site were later 19th and 20th Century addition. Today it is occupied by the Working Textile Museum, which was sadly still in a pandemic-induced closure as of September 2021, and a range of modern shops so I did not venture inside. This marks the end of the inscribed area but the Derwent Valley continues northwards to the towns of Matlock Bath and Matlock, the latter originally a spa town. It was not included as one of the Great Spa Towns of Europe but does feature some fine 19th Century buildings. Whilst the modern railway terminates at Marlock, there is a heritage service pulled by steam locomotives that continues onwards to the village of Rowsley in the Peak District National Park. At Matlock Bath there is also a cable car, a rare sight in the UK, which takes visitors up to the Heights of Abraham where there are show caverns, Victorian follies, and views down into the valley. Matlock Bath is also home to the Peak District Mining Museum for those wanting further industrial heritage to explore.

Britain has a plethora of Industrial Revolution sites to choose from and this is arguably one of the most historically significant as the birthplace of the mill system that transformed the economy. Indeed, the architecture of the mills at Cromford was very familiar to me as it is so familiar from later mill buildings all around the midlands and north of England. I have not seen the other inscribed areas around Ambergate, Belper and Derby itself but they appear at a glance to be more of the same and so, despite its importance, this is one of the less interesting UK industrial sites from a visitor’s perspective. For a better feeling of how these kinds of mills operated, Quarry Bank Mill in Styal has a large amount of restored machinery and is worth visiting if only to experience the noise of the things. Styal is also conveniently on the same railway line as Goostrey, the nearest station to Jodrell Bank. That being said, Arkwright got there first and so his mills in the Derwent Valley will forever be enshrined in history as one of the ‘Cradles of the Industrial Revolution’.