250 years of renewable energy generation at the Strutts’ Belper Mills: An extraordinary story with Ian Jackson

Famed for it’s innovative ‘fire-proof’ iron framed cotton mill, the Belper Mill complex also incorporated innovative developments in waterpower.
 
William Strutt’s improvement of the waterwheel, waterpower control and management of the River Derwent, enabled the mass manufacturing of textile thread at the complex, which today sits at the heart of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. Recent research has uncovered the stewardship of the rivers by the Georgian proprietors of the mills along England’s waterways, including the management of floods and distribution of salmon.

The use of water to generate hydroelectric power, c.1900, encouraged the new owners of the Belper Mills, the English Sewing Cotton Company, to invest in their Derwent Valley businesses and, whilst most industrial sites on the Derwent connected to the national grid to purchase electricity in the mid-20th century, the Belper site continued to invest in new turbines. The 18th century weir, mill leats and wheel pits are still in use today (harnessing the power of the river, almost continuously, for 250 years), supplying the national grid with renewable energy.

Ian is a Chartered mechanical engineer who has worked in multinational manufacturing businesses for 35 years, latterly as an independent ESOS Lead Assessor, and now is a waterpower researcher.

In 2012 he set up Amber and Derwent Valley Community Energy to try to reinstate Hydroelectric Power (HEP) at a former industrial site, at the heart of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. In 2014 it was a feasible project but changes in government support and EA requirements halted the project in 2018.

Living in the DVMWHS and trying to identify HEP opportunities, led to his research into the historic use of waterpower, the primary energy source for the early industrial revolution. Seeing the untapped HEP resource in the valley, and his role on the strategy board of the DVMWHS, led to an approach to the University of Nottingham. Ian started a full time PhD in 2020, titled ‘Climate Change mitigation: Learning from the past to unlock the hydropower potential of the Derbyshire Derwent catchment’, graduating in July 2025.