Conclusion.

Watermills, like windmills, were used wherever possible as long as there was no other form of power and on certain sites contrived to compete with steam for a considerable time. Water was used but not consumed, cost nothing except the rental of the channels by which it was brought to the mills, and provided steady and reliable power. Canals and railways often used valleys and mills had as good access to them as any other sites, as the continued use of so many millsites proves. True, water supply was sometimes affected by the new lines of communication, and mills were subject like any other undertaking to landowners' finding a more profitable use of the land they occupied. But of all the reasons given in this study for the decline of watermills, the over-riding one was the amount of power that could be produced; many of the wheels in our area were, because of their size, which was dictated by relief and supply of water, hardly more powerful than the horses by which they had on occasion to be replaced. When steam-engines had added reliability and economy to power and compactness and the factory had ruined the workshop, the end of the watermill was inevitable.