Preface

This study is confined to the Rivers Tame and Blythe, their tributaries the Rea and Cole, and smaller streams which flow into them. Having their sources almost wholly among the western ramparts of the Birmingham Plateau, except for a few tributaries of the Blythe which rise in the East Warwickshire Heights, they constitute the central drainage of the plateau.

By 'Sources of Power' is meant waterpower in the ancient sense; there are only two known instances of a waterwheel's use for the generation of electricity in this system. A vanished aspect of rural and urban industry will be studied herein - for nowadays, on about 300 miles of once usable waterways there is only one site where power is still being obtained from running water. Yet at the start of the nineteenth century there may have been a hundred such sites.

This was not exceptional for the time, other systems being in greater use, but few can have been so fully employed so near to their watershed. On the 156 known watermill sites hardly any buildings survive, very few leats and pools can be traced, and in a number of cases even the site cannot be positively identified. This is an antiquarian, even an archaeological study.

Watermills were formerly as common as smithies, and as little recorded; a note in the County History, a passing reference in a guidebook, a symbol on a Georgian map which may be inaccurate - these are the easily accessible sources of information; otherwise, rental rolls, account books, and similar estate documents might be sought, often without success.