Mill Lane was Plymouth’s first true industrial corridor, created entirely by the diverted section of Drake’s Leat to the Millbay outflow. Water meant power. In a pre‑steam world, nothing else could match it for dependability, predictability or reliability. The leat delivered energy twenty‑four hours a day, seven days a week, in all seasons, and every business that required continuous mechanical force settled along its banks. As the diverted leat dropped steadily towards Millbay, each owner cut a feeder channel, installed a wheel, and used the flow to drive machinery that would otherwise have demanded teams of labourers or the vagaries of wind.
The earliest and most important of these was Drake’s own flour mill, built almost immediately after the leat opened. It was joined by Old Town Mill further up the slope, and later by Providence Mill and King’s Mill, all producing flour for Plymouth’s population and for naval victualling. The leat also powered a bone mill, which crushed bones for fertiliser, and a tannery that used water for washing hides, driving hammers and flushing waste. Another tannery operated further down the lane, taking advantage of the same reliable flow. Dye works and canvas makers used the water for washing, soaking and finishing cloth, while shammy (chamois) mills upstream softened skins using water‑powered fulling hammers. Fulling and tucking mills on the moors had long used water to thicken and finish woollen cloth, and the same principle applied here: the leat provided the force needed to drive heavy machinery without interruption.
Mining interests upstream had used leats for centuries to scour hillsides, drive stamping mills, wash ore, operate bellows and pump unwanted water from workings. The technology was well understood, and Plymouth’s merchants simply applied the same principles to urban industry. As the town expanded, Mill Lane became a dense corridor of workshops. Burton’s sawmill used the leat to drive saws for timber, while an iron foundry relied on water power for bellows and machinery. Two separate cement works operated along the lane, each using the water for grinding and mixing. The cattle market at the bottom of the slope also depended on the leat for washing pens and supplying water to livestock.
By the nineteenth century the lane had become a tightly packed industrial district, with the leat divided into several channels to feed multiple wheels. The reliability of the water made it possible for these businesses to operate continuously, and the concentration of mills created a self‑reinforcing industrial zone. The leat’s diverted course, originally cut by Drake to reach his own mill at Millbay, had unintentionally created Plymouth’s first industrial estate. Although the Blitz and later redevelopment erased most physical traces, the name Mill Lane reminds us of the period when water from Dartmoor powered flour mills, tanneries, dye works, sawmills, foundries and cement works, all driven by the same dependable flow that entered the town in the sixteenth century.
