AWAY FROM THE WATER: TRACKING THE LEGACY OF LANDSCAPE AND CLIMATE IN EARLY INDUSTRIAL BRITISH TEXTILE MILLS (Invited Presentation)

The causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution in Britain have remained a topic of vigorous scholarly debate for over 150 years. Through a transdisciplinary effort combining a novel mix of geomorphology, historical climatology, technological and socio-economic history, we revisit the ‘end of the Age of Water Power’ to evaluate the driving forces behind the epochal transition to coal-based steam power in the 19^th century textile industry. Here, we evaluate the legacy of geomorphology and climate in shaping mill distribution, gross stream power potential, and water power longevity in early Industrial Britain. This project utilised publicly available datasets of topography, modern and historical precipitation and evaporation to generate high-resolution gross stream power potential maps for modern and proto-Industrial Great Britain. We synthesise our results against the long-held argument that inadequate water resources instigated the wholesale conversion ‘away from the water’ to steam power in Industrial textile milling.

Initial results suggest that neither early Industrial Scotland nor England fully utilised their stream power potential: there was no lack of new mill sites. Extremely powerful sites, such as near New Lanark and Stanley mills, were indeed limited but moderately powerful sites remained plentiful. Scotland, at least under average hydrological conditions, provided more power potential than that of Northern England. Abundant knickpoints, high mean effective moisture and steep, glacially conditioned valleys support more powerful rivers; all of which provided additional means to further develop water management schemes in early Scottish textile mills. Only a few English river basins reached saturation in terms of power potential by the mid-19^th century. In these regions, few new mill sites with plentiful power were available, if either construction of supplemental mill infrastructure or social water cooperation were not undertaken. Despite broad underutilisation of hydropower across early Industrial mainland Britain, low flow periods indicated by historical precipitation further highlight that episodic drought may have been an important yet underestimated natural driver in the dynamic evolution ‘away from the water’.