For the past 20 years, I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles
to uncover the history of these islands.
But now it's time to do something different.
I'm going to turn the engine off, and leave the car behind.
Instead, I'm going to walk.
My walks will uncover the richest history from our finest landscapes
in a way that's only possible on foot.
This time I'm in Derbyshire, following a spectacular route
through the Peak District and along the Derwent Valley.
The landscape here is incredible. It's wild. It's dramatic.
It's romantic.
But it's also the place where one of the most extraordinary
chapters in British history unfolded.
Because the Derwent Valley is the place
where the Industrial Revolution began.
On this walk, I'm going to see how Britain transformed itself
from a nation of farmers into the industrial powerhouse of the world.
I've devised a four-day walk, starting in the Peak District
town of Bakewell, focus point of the area's agricultural past.
I'll explore the River Wye and the limestone high ground
that's created some of the greatest fortunes in the land.
As I join the River Derwent, I'll see for myself the immense power
of water and the groundbreaking mill towns of the valley.
I'll follow the Cromford Canal for five miles,
stopping off to explore revolutionary steam technology...
..before finishing my 44-mile route in the great railway city of Derby.
Over one remarkable 80-year period from the late 18th century
the landscape and resources of the Derwent valley became the key
to a giant leap forward for mankind.
The Industrial Revolution changed the way we live.
It opened the door to goods, new forms of power and transport.
It turned Britain into the richest nation on earth.
At the heart of it all was the simple concept of mass production -
a concept that dominates our world to this day.
A concept first proven here.
It's hard to believe that modern Britain, with all its sprawling cities and its motorways
and its technological paraphernalia, should have started
in such a quiet and old-fashioned landscape.
But it did - and it's a cracking story.
Here in the heart of Britain's oldest national park,
I want to start by finding out
what was going on before the industrial age arrived.
Modern Bakewell remains at the centre of an agricultural area,
but it's also now making plenty of money from visitors like me.
Good Morning.
Hiya. That is not a Bakewell tart, is it?
It's not indeed, no. It's a Bakewell pudding.
What's the difference?
They're totally different. This one hasn't got any flour.
It's got ground almonds, eggs, butter and sugar mixed together,
so it sets a bit like an egg custard in texture.
Totally different to the tart.
Can I have a little one for my walk?
You can indeed.
Ta.
Thank you. Bye bye.
Thanks. See you.
Tourism may be big business today,
but over the years, the local landscape has had an uncanny
habit of providing very nicely for the people of Derbyshire.
Here in Bakewell,
Mother Nature provided a series of springs that flowed with warm water.
And by the Middle Ages, this was already a very wealthy area.
In times gone by, they used to grow hay down there.
And that's where the thermal springs come in
because they kept the crops warm. They reckon that in Saxon times,
you could grow up to six crops a year down there.
Throughout history,
wealth has invariably originated by exploiting the land.
And local prosperity is a key reason why the Industrial Revolution
took off here rather than anywhere else.
So I'm starting my walk by heading upstream,
to unspoilt areas where agriculture still rules.
Just a mile and a half out of Bakewell, the delightful
village of Ashford in the Water has been farming since medieval times.
One business in particular has always dominated,
so I'm meeting 88-year-old Tom Brocklehurst for an insight.
Hiya, Tom.
Hello, how are you?
All right. Nice to see you.
Tom is the fifth generation of his family to keep sheep.
And in the 21st century,
Tom is one of the last to remember the traditional
practice of bringing his flock to the 17th-century Sheep Wash Bridge.
Why did you have to wash the sheep?
Because there was a price difference between washed sheep wool and unwashed wool.
So you made more money if the sheep were clean?
Yes, that's right.
Every year, all the local flocks would be brought here for an annual dunking.
Once gathered in this pen, each sheep would be unceremoniously
dumped in the flowing water for a few minutes,
before being hauled out downstream to dry out on the grassy bank.
What was it like here in wool's heyday when they were doing the washing?
Well, it would be a hive of activity.
Most of the village brought all their sheep together.
Of course, the children had the day off school as well.
Oh, did they?
Yes.
That's me.
That's you?
Yes. Slimline!
Very sprightly, weren't you?
Yes.
This one taking the...taking it off at the other side.
I like your pipe.
Yes.
Yes... That's the sheep returning.
That is a fantastic photo.
Yes.
We'd take them all back into the village and they'd
peel off at their own farm because they left the lambs behind.
Well, thanks for showing me all that.
Nice to meet you.
You're welcome. You're welcome.
Cheers.
OK. Have a good walk.
And you. Have a good day.
Leaving Ashford,
you can see the extent to which farming still shapes the landscape.
Never mind sheep farming...they ought to be farming flipping goats up here!
In the past, the route to success was very simple -
the more land you acquired, the more wealth you could generate from it.
And here among the limestone peaks of Derbyshire,
the ground offered up one major bonus -
something else for the great landowners to exploit -
massive amounts of lead.
And there's evidence of that exploitation over there.
That's Magpie Mine, and it's one of the many lead mines that
cover this part of the Peaks.
In the 1600s, just a century before the industrial age began,
the national economy was still dominated by the wool trade.
But incredibly, the second most important business was lead.
It was used for all sorts of things.
It was used for lead shot for muskets.
It was used...a huge amount of it was used in plumbing, for example,
before copper piping,
all the stately homes had lead downspouts.
They had piping for the water, etc.
These magnificent mine buildings are a Victorian construction.
But by that point,
they'd been extracting lead from the ground here for up to 800 years.
Well, this doesn't look quite as dramatic as that up there, does it?
No. Everyone thinks of that up there as Magpie Mine,
but this shaft, Shuttlebark shaft, has been since late 1600s - 1674.
This kind of mining here -
presumably it was nowhere near as profitable as...
as the archetypal mine that we've got up on the hillside?
Sometimes that would be right but here it's wrong.
They spent so much money going down really deep,
because all the good lead from near the surface had already gone,
that they lost a fortune.
This unimpressive looking shaft -
they were making a lot of money at that point.
The heavy work of hauling the lead ore up to ground level was done
by horses - the most flexible source of power in pre-industrial Britain.
But that didn't mean some serious human effort wasn't also required.
Over 20,000 workers endured the dangers of mining
here in Derbyshire, in return for a higher wage than farm labouring.
But the real beneficiaries, of course, were the landowners.
Shuttlebark and thousands more shafts like it were producing great profits.
Added to the proceeds from the wool trade,
it meant that on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, Derbyshire
boasted some of the greatest fortunes in England.
Four miles from Magpie Mine is one of the very greatest.
These fields that I'm walking across are known as Haddon Fields.
And that is Haddon Hall. It's very impressive, isn't it, and very big.
Particularly when you know that it was built round about 1150,
and it's been in the hands of the same wealthy family for round about 900 years.
In fact, by the time of the Industrial Revolution,
their land stretched from here all the way to Sheffield, which is about 20 miles away.
Old Derbyshire money has never been afraid of an entrepreneurial opportunity.
In the last 20 years, Haddon Hall has been rented out to showbiz -
three Jane Eyres, one Elizabeth, and a Pride and Prejudice, no less.
Centuries ago, moneymaking opportunities were rather different.
The great landowners used their wealth and influence
to make big things happen.
And Derbyshire was very well set up.
It happened to be at the very centre of the country,
it had a large workforce, and the money to make serious capital investment.
But as I approach Rowsley village, the Wye joins the Derwent,
I'm hoping my best investment has been my Bakewell pudding.
Mmmm, rather nice!
Tomorrow, I'm going to investigate the last key reason
why the Industrial Revolution started here.
It's all about the power of that river.
No amount of horses were going to propel Britain into a new age,
but in the Derwent Valley, nature had the answer.
It's Day 2 of my Derbyshire walk, exploring the birthplace
of the industrial age. Today, I'm tackling eight miles
to reach the small village where the Industrial Revolution began.
Leaving Rowsley, I'll join the Derwent Valley,
heading downstream past Matlock,
to the favourite view point of High Tor
and finally, the key historic site of Cromford.
When we talk about the Industrial Revolution, it tends to conjure up
images of coal mines, doesn't it, of great big chimneys
belching out smoke and clouds of steam. But in its infancy,
the Industrial Revolution wasn't powered by coal,
but by something much cleaner,
something which there's a lot of round here.
This stuff - water.
Water power is hardly new, though - one way or another,
we've been using it for thousands of years.
But in the late 1700s, the power of the Derwent valley
was about to be harnessed on a scale unseen anywhere in the world.
So on the edge of Rowsley, I've come to Caudwell Mill
to see the power of water in action.
This building still runs as a flour mill
and it's jam-packed full of mechanics.
In fact, they've even spilled over into this courtyard.
You've got pipes and grinders, wheels and cogs -
four floors' worth - and they're all powered from in here.
Since 1591, Caudwell Mill has ground corn, flour and animal feed.
It's even been a sawmill.
The machinery we see today is Victorian,
but the power source hasn't changed in over 400 years.
Morning, Paul.
Morning, Tony.
You gonna rig me up?
'And I'm getting kitted up to access an area few visitors get to see.'
This is incredibly slippy.
'The only way to see what powers this huge mill
'is by dropping through a narrow hatch
'into a decidedly unwelcoming underground chamber.'
This is what I've come here to see - this weird piece of machinery.
When the mill is set to grind flour, this chamber is filled with water.
As water flows through the giant pipe,
it drives the sealed turbine within.
But the water itself comes from over here -
this is a one and half-ton sluice gate and I tell you,
when that lifts up, the water really kicks off.
Probably not too sensible if I hang around.
Right, Lance - are you ready to lift the gates?
OK.
It's awesome that that's where I was 30 seconds ago.
How much power is it?
It's about 75 horsepower.
Obviously, it depends how much water you put through it,
but it needs a lot of horsepower because we've got this floor,
three more floors above, all with this heavy machinery
and belts and stuff like that running.
The use of water to grind grain is an age-old practice,
demonstrated quite beautifully here at Caudwell Mill.
But the Industrial Revolution was not about producing the staples
of life like flour or animal feed.
The transformation to an industrial economy
required a quite different product.
A product whose very success would rely on it being made
on a massive scale and being purchased by millions,
across Britain - even across the world.
That product was this stuff - cotton.
See, up until the 1760s, your choices of materials to wear
were pretty limited. There was wool,
if it was available, but wool's pretty scratchy
and difficult to wash. And if you attempt to cut it,
the wool starts to unravel, so it's hard to tailor.
There was silk - but that's very expensive.
Cotton, though, was affordable, it was comfortable and it was washable.
By 1750, though, the challenge was on -
cotton was set to clothe the masses.
Anyone who could find a way to spin tonnes and tonnes of cotton
would open the door to a textile goldmine.
The answer to that challenge
lay not in the upper valley of the Derwent which was dominated by wool,
but in the lower valley - to be dominated by new cotton.
And I can see it all from the famous High Tor.
You've got to look at this.
Pretty gorgeous, isn't it?
I started off over there, where that mast is, on the horizon.
And then followed the Derwent in that direction.
There's Matlock there and then it snakes round,
the river comes along here, along the Derwent, which passes me here.
And I'm heading off in that direction towards Cromford,
because that is where the Industrial Revolution really started.
From the giant limestone crag of High Tor,
it's just an hour's walk to Cromford
and most of it's downhill!
Ten years ago, the 15-mile stretch of walk ahead of me
was proclaimed a World Heritage Site.
Recognition of the incredible contribution it's made
to human development.
The Derwent Valley already had the workforce, the wealth
and the power to drive a transformation,
but the Industrial Revolution needed a moment of genius -
someone to light the blue touch paper.
That person was Richard Arkwright.
And in 1771, he turned a handful of cottages
and farm buildings into Cromford Mill.
The place had an impact that would change the way we live.
Richard Arkwright was the youngest son
of an artisan family from Preston.
I say youngest - one of 13 children!
And he was apprentice to a wig maker at a young age
and one of the jobs he had was to travel around the country
buying hair, because the best wigs were made from real hair
and women's hair in particular.
He came across a number of people
who were trying to find a means of mechanising the process of spinning.
'With a growing interest in engineering and invention,
'Arkwright was fascinated by these ideas.
'Conventional spinning machines needed a skilled worker
'to produce just a single thread.
'But by 1768, Arkwright had designed this - the spinning frame,
'a machine that needed no skills and could spin multiple threads at once.
'At first, it was the familiar power of horses
'that drove the spinning, but the founder of Cromford Mill
'was looking for more power, much more power - 24 hours a day.
Arkwright's big idea was to see the potential of harnessing waterpower.
And he brought the water in via an aqueduct,
the lip of which you can see between the two buildings there.
In converting his spinning frame into the water frame,
Arkwright could put production on another level.
His mill would run so long as there was water to drive it.
And even here, Arkwright was ingenious.
Rather than harnessing the Derwent itself,
he used warm water drained from local lead mines,
meaning icy conditions would never be a problem.
In 1771, the world's first water-powered cotton spinning mill
opened right here.
Five floors of industry,
masses of water frames,
each one spinning dozens of cotton threads at once.
'This quiet, rugged shell has become a shrine to a breakthrough moment
'in our history - celebrated today by an art installation
'that threads, twists and spins its way across this atmospheric space.'
Is it fair to call this birthplace of the Industrial Revolution?
Well, I think so.
You're standing in the first water-powered cotton-spinning mill
in the world. And, of course,
the ideas that Arkwright perfected here extended throughout the country,
some 200 Arkwright mills eventually operating
by the end of the century, and transferred also to France, Germany
and to the United States.
The cotton mills would help Britain become the greatest
textile producer in the world.
But what Arkwright achieved here was far more than that -
for Cromford was actually the world's first factory.
Employees performed tightly defined tasks,
working on rotation in 12-hour shifts.
We go round here.
'In its early years the site employed 500 people,
'which, away from the mill itself,
'led to Arkwright's other great innovation -
'he had his staff living on the doorstep.'
He provided gardens and even pigstys to assist their self-sufficiency.
'With the mill up and running,
'Arkwright engineered an entire village.'
Why did he do it?
I think it could best be described as enlightened self-interest.
I think he recognised that to house his workers in the village,
near to the workplace, actually provided better workers.
They are actually quite big houses. What was going on inside them?
Well, they look big now.
But they're actually one floor on the ground floor. One up.
And then a weaving or spinning floor at the top.
You can see the classic sort of weaving windows.
'Up the road, the mill was almost entirely staffed by women
'and children. Arkwright deemed them the best workers.'
Back at home, men would work as weavers,
producing cloth from the spun yarn.
Not Arkwright's core business by any means, but if it meant
he could turn a profit from a whole family - all the better.
Cromford might just as well have been called Arkwrightville!
And Arkwrightville is my home for the night.
So there's time for a visit to the community hub!
No great surprise, though - this was another spin-off business
for you-know-who.
This thing is very rare and I think incredibly interesting.
It's a Spanish doubloon
and round the outside, it says "King of Spain and the Indies".
But when you turn it round, it's been over-stamped.
It says "Cromford" and then a 4 and a 9,
which I think stands for 4 and 9 pence.
It's an Arkwright doubloon - he over-stamped it.
And of course these things could only be used in his pubs and shops
and this is what he paid his people with.
So when they wanted to spend their money,
guess who got all the profits?
Now I wonder if an Arkwright doubloon
could get me a room for the night?
'I've reached the halfway point of my Derbyshire walk.
'Tonight I need to be in the famous mill town of Belper,
'nine miles south of here.
'But already I've seen the birthplace
'of the Industrial Revolution.'
At Cromford, the Derwent Valley
could boast the world's first factory.
And within 15 years of its opening, Richard Arkwright -
Cromford's founder - had built a further five cotton mills
along the river.
It's not a bad view, is it?
Can you see a cream house there and a brick one next to it?
That brick one is the house Arkwright built for himself
next to his factory.
And if you look over there, see that house?
Well, that's what he built a few years later.
By the last years of Arkwright's life,
he'd become the richest self-made man in Britain.
As an inventor and entrepreneur,
he was the 18th-century equivalent of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
But he'd built his empire in a remote and challenging landscape,
so he had an obvious problem.
How to get raw cotton into the valley,
and how to get more and more finished products out.
Luckily for Arkwright, in the late 1780s,
a new transport innovation was creeping across Britain,
one that would suit the Derwent Valley very well.
A canal.
As canal-mania began to sweep across Britain,
the ageing Arkwright joined other investors in a project
to link Cromford to the growing centres of the Midlands.
Throughout the 1800s,
the wharves of the Cromford Canal echoed to the sound of coal barges,
limestone barges and the cotton industry.
Today, conserved by the Friends of the Cromford Canal,
they seem a rather more tranquil place.
Although I have secured a meeting with their president.
Hey-hey!
Tony! Ha-ha!
Nice to see you.
Lovely to see you, mate.
Lovely to see you.
Are you a Derbyshire lad, then?
No, I'm not, I'm a Yorkshire lad.
I come from about 30 miles... Mexborough, I was born, over there.
And I used to come here on my holidays a lot
and went along all the canals.
I suppose when you think Cromford would have been so isolated,
suddenly once it's got this canal,
it's really linked with the outside world and the rest of the canal network.
That's right! You can go all the way to Erewash and beyond.
You'll be related to 2,000 miles of canals,
that are now linking up and linking up.
Kind of like a vertebrae, veins, right across the country.
How do you feel about the original engineers of the canals?
It was 1794. Amazing, miraculous, what they did.
The whole valley here, the Cromford Valley, is Shangri-La.
It's a most wonderful place!
For nearly 50 years, business on the canal grew steadily
till it was carrying almost 300,000 tonnes a year.
The industrial revolution marked the golden age of canals.
But it didn't last.
By 1900, their heyday had passed,
and like the Cromford Canal, many were simply abandoned.
But here, there are signs of a new dawn.
They're going to, kind of, re-open the Cromford Canal
and dredge it and dig it and repair it,
which is absolutely a monstrous task!
It's 14 and a half miles long.
Then it gets all silted up, etcetera, etcetera.
Almost a write-off. Buildings have fallen in,
chimneys have fallen in, bridges have fallen in.
You're pretty passionate about it now, aren't you?
Yes, there's a fascination with the canals for me
in the fact that, you know, full of great crested newts, my big love,
and smooth newts of varying colours.
You'd see them along here in thousands and thousands.
You could pick handfuls of them up.
Leaving Brian to his newts, it's time for me to press on.
I'm going to be following the old canal
as it hugs the River Derwent heading south.
But first of all, I'm making a diversion.
While the canal dealt with proven transport technology,
by the late 1820s, engineers just south of Cromford
were working on an entirely new transport innovation.
OK, I think I turn left here.
Look, I've come from Cromford all the way down this brown road
to here, which is where I am now.
I'm going to turn left up to Middleton Top.
See that mark there? I think that means a viewpoint,
which sounds like I'm going to have to do quite a bit of climbing.
'I'm joining the old track bed of the Cromford & High Peak Railway.
'And for many, the simple word "railway" represents the highpoint
'of the Industrial Revolution.'
The ambition here was sky-high,
although the method was unusual.
The canal had opened the Derwent Valley south and eastwards.
This railway aimed to open up an audacious corridor to the West,
all the way to Manchester.
It was built by the son of a canal engineer.
But it was constructed very much like a canal.
That was the philosophy behind it.
Just as canals used flights of locks to gain height,
the railway used four sections of steep track to raise the line
by 1,000 feet in less than five miles.
The length of the project, too, was gob-smacking.
Just six years earlier, the famous Stockton & Darlington Railway
had been the longest in the world, at 26 miles.
In 1831, this railway reached 33 miles
and crossed the Derbyshire Peaks in the process.
So, Colin, how did they get one of those things
chugging all the way up there?
Well, they didn't. That's a popular misconception.
The locomotives weren't used on the inclines.
What they used instead was that.
'That is Middleton Top.
'It stands at one of the highest points on the Cromford & High Peak Railway.
'Inside here is a steam engine.
'Steam was the new source of power
'that came to symbolise the whole Industrial Revolution.'
Shall we go in? Yes, certainly.
A winding engine! So they were actually pulling the trucks up?
Yes.
And there's one massive rope fixed to the trucks,
which it's pulling up.
Pretty well, yes. The rope would be stopped
and wagons would be attached top and bottom by the hanger-on,
who would wrap chains around the rope.
Was he really called a hanger-on?
Oh, yes. He hung the wagons on the rope, you see.
When they were ready, the engine man would start the engine,
the engine would move the rope
and the wagons would move on the incline.
Is it possible for me to have a go?
Yes.
What do I do?
Just step behind there... Yep.
And these are the two regulator levers, one in each hand,
and you press those downwards to open them.
Oh, it's started, yep.
It's extraordinary to be in control of such large pieces of machinery
which emanate such incredible power.
When was this built?
This was built during 1829 and these are actually
the oldest rotative engines in the world still on their original site.
Seen like this, in such magnificent condition,
the power of steam is captivating.
This was one of the world's first steam railways,
and, remarkably, the engine is still here for us to marvel at
180 years later.
Back outside,
I'm heading down the old railway line to rejoin the Derwent Valley.
See how steep this incline is?
Well, in the year 1888, it caused a real disaster.
Three trucks that were coming down it broke away.
One of them was carrying gunpowder. They got faster and faster.
By the time they were at the bottom they were doing 120 miles per hour
and leapt over the canal, went into the railway line,
over the railway line and skidded to a halt in the next field.
And woomph! Exploded.
And minutes later, a passenger train chugged by.
It's hard to imagine something like these hurtling down the track at 120 miles an hour, isn't it?
'These trucks mark where the pioneering railway
'met up with the Cromford Canal.
'At one time this would have been a hive of activity,
'with goods and raw materials being transferred from trucks
'onto the old barges of the canal.'
And I'm following the now-overgrown canal southwards,
to find out what the local pioneers did next.
On my way, though,
there's the small diversion of the Wyvern Lane Bird Reserve.
I must be the world's worst bird-watcher.
There's supposed to be pochard here,
teal, widgeon, tufted duck.
But all I've seen is a few herons, and a cormorant up a tree...
..and a train.
The train is at least a big clue to the latter stages of my walk.
As the industrial revolution evolved
and steam started powering large factories elsewhere,
the Derwent Valley didn't simply keel over.
Quite the opposite. The valley innovated and expanded.
And by 1840, the Midland Railway simply had to come here.
The nearest station is in the milling town of Belper -
my overnight stop.
But I'm taking a roundabout route
to head straight to a historic local pub.
The village of Makeney lies just off the old road
running north through the Peaks.
Before the railways arrived,
what little travel there was took place by coach.
Look. "Wanted. The noted Highwayman Richard Turpin.
"He was seen at Makeney," which is the village we're in now,
"where he didst call at the Holly Bush Inn", which is this pub!
"A reward of £200 is offered for the capture of the said Turpin."
(He was here!)
'The roads of pre-industrial Britain
'were the stalking grounds of highwaymen -
'perpetrators of vicious crimes
'that the passing of time have rather romanticised.'
Turpin used to run a gang called the Essex Gang,
and he heard of an old lady who was supposed to have a fortune of £700.
So what did he do?
He tied her up and dangled her from a rope over a fire.
I mean, it's hardly heroic, is it?
Turpin spent most of his life around London,
but as the law caught up, he ventured further north,
bringing terror to the routes of Derbyshire.
But really he was just a remnant of a different age.
People up here were interested in the future.
And tomorrow I'll see how the town of Belper
led the world in a very surprising direction.
Upwards.
I've spent three days finding out how, almost 250 years ago,
the beautiful Derwent Valley was leading the world into a new age.
But by 1800, the Industrial Revolution was in full flight,
and factories were appearing
in rising industrial giants like Manchester.
So on my final day, I'm going to be seeing
how Derbyshire kept itself ahead of the game.
I'll be ending my walk in the railway city of Derby.
But I'm starting upstream in the sizeable mill town of Belper.
Belper was like Cromford's big brother.
Everything about it was a step up in scale.
Whereas Arkwright's Mill at Cromford employed 500 people,
at one time, Belper employed over 2,000.
Cromford had one water mill - this one had 14.
While mills in other areas needed coal-powered steam engines,
here by the mighty river Derwent,
Mother Nature was all that was needed.
Belper owes its size and scale initially to one man -
Jedediah Strutt.
By the mid 1800s, there were eight Strutt-owned mills here,
making Belper the second largest town in the county.
But mill owners had one big worry.
Early cotton mills had an inherent problem - they were timber-framed,
cotton's flammable, and just one spark could send them sky-high.
Fire destroyed one Strutt mill in 1781.
Five more Derbyshire mills went up in flames in the 1790s.
And in 1803, it was the turn of Belper's own North Mill.
But less than two years later, the North Mill was back,
better and much bigger than before.
At the time of the fire,
Jedediah's son, William Strutt, had been experimenting
with an entirely new fire-resistant building technique.
As much as possible, he tried to replace timber with iron.
And here in the basement of the North Mill,
you can see his ideas put into practice on a massive scale.
Well, this model really shows you exactly how it would work.
You've got the stone columns that you can see down here,
but this gives you a cutaway of what you'd see above
and it was William that came up with this idea
of having an iron frame and sitting on these columns.
In 1804, the mill above me
was the largest fire-resistant building in the world.
The Derwent Valley had made another great contribution
to the Industrial Revolution.
But Strutt's idea went further.
An iron framework meant that layers could be added.
Floor...after floor...after floor.
The North Mill may only be six storeys high,
but in this building,
Belper pioneered a building principle
that's shaped our modern cities.
Metal frames have been the key to building high all over the world.
Heading south, I'm following a popular walking route
called the Derwent Valley Heritage Way.
It's just the right week for these blackberries.
They're coming away from the stalk beautifully.
700 years ago, I'd have been walking through a hunting forest
filled with deer, wild boar and even wolves.
But by 1800, it had all changed.
The monuments to a groundbreaking past are everywhere.
But it's fitting that I should be finishing my journey
in the lower reaches of this great valley,
where industry has stayed and thrived.
In the 1830s,
the great and the good of Derby had their eye on one thing -
linking the ancient county town to the railway.
Its future would be transformed
if Derby could become a part of the growing national network.
It did better than that.
Derby's central location made it an ideal railway hub,
and in 1844, it became the headquarters
of the Midland Railway Company.
Offices, platforms,
engine sheds and workshops covered 80 acres of the city.
The golden age of the railways
was arguably the last great act of the Industrial Revolution.
And one of the jewels in the railway crown is here in Derby -
the one key building I've come to see.
Looks like I'm on the right track.
Just a few steps from the station is The Roundhouse.
Beautifully restored just a few years ago,
and now attracting the attention it deserves.
Isn't this place fantastic? And so beautifully renovated.
When the locomotives of the Midland Railway broke down,
this is where they came to be fixed.
The Roundhouse was a giant repair hangar,
based around an ingenious turntable.
With 16 radiating tracks,
at least 32 engines could be serviced here at once.
It was built in 1839 at a time when the Industrial Revolution
wasn't really much of a revolution any more.
70 years after Arkwright had established Cromford,
things like mass production, and factories, and engines
were the new normality.
True to the innovating tradition of this valley,
this particular factory was the first of its kind.
The railway roundhouse was a concept copied across the country,
and all over the world.
What would it have been like in here?
Oh, it would be an absolute hell-hole.
It's the only word that can describe it.
We're now in a beautiful, light space,
but the glass that's now letting all the light in
wouldn't have been here.
There would have been wooden louvers
that were open to let all the smoke out,
because what you've got here is 30-odd locomotives
belching smoke and soot.
You've got people bashing large pieces of metal with hammers.
Filing, repairing - just horrible.
It would have been noisy, dirty, hot, almost unbreathable -
a very unpleasant place to be.
Presumably, if it hadn't been for the railways,
then Derby could well be the size of Belper now?
Absolutely, it could, and probably would be.
Yeah, I mean, the railways turned Derby
from an 18th-century market town
into a 19th century industrial boomtown/city.
While walking along the Derwent Valley,
I've seen the Industrial Revolution unfold and develop in front of me.
What started as a technological leap in Cromford,
had influenced the entire country
by the time the railways arrived in Derby.
OK - Derbyshire is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,
but when you say that,
it just sounds like a rather arid piece of history.
The reality is, though,
that so many things that are really important to us today -
like global markets and manufactured goods
and a sophisticated transport system -
started right here by the side of the Derwent.
And that kind of thing hasn't gone away.
Bombardier still make trains here,
Rolls Royce still manufacture engines here,
Toyota still make cars here.
The seeds of the ideas that began here at the end of the 18th century
still flourish today in the early years of the 21st century.
If you want to follow in my footsteps,
you can download a guide to my walk from www.channel4.com.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd