The Dakeyne Disc Engine

Abstract

I was brought up with the legend of the Romping Lion that drove the old flax mill in Two Dales, a small village some two miles north of the Derbyshire town of Matlock. Born in 1859, my grandfather’s early years were spent in Brookbottom (Figure 1), a narrow lane in the village dominated by the shadow of the mill. He clearly remembered the roaring noise coming from the engine house which gave this mysterious machine its name. He showed me the pile of stones that had been the engine house, where the lineshaft crossed the road to what he called the Old Mill, the dams further up the valley of Ladygrove and Moss Castle (Figure 2), a semi-circular embankment built into the hillside far above the mill. It was only in the early 1970s that, reading Frank Nixon’s seminal work on the industrial archaeology of Derbyshire, I realised that the Romping Lion was not just some type of water wheel but a unique high-pressure water engine. It was the Dakeyne Disc Engine. However, it was to be another three decades before I decided I should find out exactly what the disc engine was and how it worked.