BORROWASH - Mill Site & Lands

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The Order of St Lazarus and the Mill at Borrowash

The medieval mill at Borrowash, near Spondon in Derbyshire, was part of a valuable riverside landscape on the River Derwent. The site lay at the southern edge of modern Borrowash, close to the Elvaston end of Station Road, near the later Riverside Farm / Riverside House area. The medieval buildings have not survived, but the river channels, weirs and water-management features preserve the memory of a site that was once economically important — and violently contested.

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The mill was probably established by the 12th century and was certainly active by the 13th century. It stood where the Derwent’s flow could be controlled by weirs and channels, providing the power needed to drive waterwheels. In its earliest and most important medieval form, it was almost certainly a corn mill, used for grinding grain into flour. Such mills were valuable assets: they served local communities, generated income through milling dues, and gave their owners control over water rights, tenants and agricultural production.

Borrowash lay within a complex landscape of religious ownership. Dale Abbey, the Premonstratensian house near Ilkeston, held major milling rights on the Derwent and developed the Borrowash site extensively. At the same time, the Order of St Lazarus held interests in the wider area around Locko, Spondon, Chaddesden and Borrowash. Their English headquarters were at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire, but their Derbyshire properties formed an important local estate. This brought the Lazarites into close contact — and eventually conflict — with Dale Abbey.

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The surviving records show that by 1283 the Order of St Lazarus had possession or use of a mill at Burgh by Spondon, generally identified with the Borrowash mill site. The mill was not simply a small rural building: it was an income-producing asset within a competitive river economy. Control of a mill meant control of water, tenants, grain processing and local revenue. In this context, the dispute between Dale Abbey and the Lazarites was as much about economic power as about land.

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The conflict came to a head in March 1283. A royal commission was issued after a complaint by the Master of the Hospital of Burton Lazars, who was under the king’s protection. The complaint stated that the Abbot of Dale, together with a large company of armed men, came to the master’s mill at Burgh by Spondon. There they attacked members of the Lazarite household, including Brother Robert de Dalby, Brother William le Rus, Ralph de Ingwardeby, and others associated with the master.

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A later Chancery inquisition gives the charge in stronger detail. It records that Roger de Sancto Andrea and others came to the site, assaulted the Lazarite brethren and servants, carried away the master’s goods, and burned the mill, its timber and the goods inside it. This was not a minor quarrel. The records describe an armed raid involving a significant local following, directed against one of the Order’s valuable mill properties.

The event is sometimes remembered as the “Battle of Borrowash Mills”, although the surviving legal records describe it more accurately as an armed attack, assault, looting and arson. It was not a formal battle between armies, but it was a serious violent confrontation between two religious institutions with overlapping interests in the same landscape.

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The named Lazarite victims are especially important. Robert de Dalby later appears as Master of Burton Lazars, suggesting that he was already a senior figure within the Order, perhaps connected with the management of the Derbyshire estate. The presence of Lazarite brethren at the mill indicates that this was not merely a tenanted property but a site of direct concern to the Order.

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The legal outcome is less clear. The Crown ordered an inquiry, and the accusation was formally recorded, but no published final judgement, fine, punishment or settlement has yet been identified. The case may once have continued in plea rolls or other records that remain unpublished or difficult to trace. What survives, however, is enough to show that the mill at Borrowash was the focus of a serious dispute between Dale Abbey and the Order of St Lazarus.

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Today, nothing visible remains of the medieval Lazarite mill building itself. The later mill complex at Borrowash continued to evolve after the Middle Ages, becoming associated with fulling, iron-working and textile production before its eventual demolition in the 20th century. Yet the river landscape still marks the place where medieval water power was harnessed, contested and defended.

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The mill at Borrowash therefore offers a rare glimpse into the practical economy of the Order of St Lazarus in England. Away from the better-known commandery at Burton Lazars, the Order’s Derbyshire lands included valuable working assets: mills, water rights, tenants and revenues. The attack of 1283 shows how fiercely such rights could be disputed, even between religious houses.