© Copyright Friends of Belper Parks, St Johns Chapel, The Butts, Belper, DE56 1HX, U.K. Site update 1st September 2008
Background aerial photograph courtesy of Amber Valley Borough Council
The brook that crosses the Local Nature Reserve is one of its most attractive features and its banks provide important habitats. It is also a very interesting water course from the historic viewpoint.
It begins its course at Ripley and runs through Morley Park, another of the ancient deer parks of Duffield Frith, through White Moor and under the road at the Pottery School. It runs down an ever deepening valley parallel to Nottingham Road to Mill Lane where it enters the Park. Beyond the Park it passes under the Fleet, along Brookside, across the Heritage Point development site in a culvert and past Morrison’s to enter the River Derwent.
The paths in the Park cross the Coppice Brook by a bridge reconstructed in 2006 from a concrete farm road bridge, which replaced a more picturesque footbridge and a vehicle ford, which were the subject of several old postcards. Just east of the bridge there is evidence of the stream having been straightened out with stone walled banks.
Over the years the stream provided many facilities for the local community, a source of water and a route for sewerage, a source of power and of water for fishponds. It also will have functioned as the drinking water supply for the deer in the park.
There is a reference to a fishpond in Belper Park being stocked from the Royal Hunting Lodge at Clipstone in Nottinghamshire in 1227-31. William De Ferrers, Earl of Derby, was granted 20 small pike from the pond to be installed in his pond at Belper. A hundred years later there is a reference to a wall being built around the pond and providing lead for a water conduit. The cost of the lead suggests something quite substantial and it may have been the way that fresh water entered the pond from upstream. There is a large flat but slight damp area of land in the Coppice, with banks on the east and north side, which may well have been the location of this medieval Fishpond.
The pond was created by means of a dam, the location of which can still be seen. From the raised level of the dam, water could flow along a channel on an embankment that still survives. The function of this early feature remains a mystery.
The Lady Well, to the south of the Brook, drained into it. It is recorded as " a never failing spring ... gushing from the hillsides through a stone spout, clear as crystal and falling into a stone trough and thence down a gully into the brook at the bottom of the ravine."
There was a water mill beside Coppice Brook. The Kings Mill was located on Mill Lane and ground corn. It is still possible to see where the wheel was located, parts of the mill buildings and water channels. The playing field alongside the brook used to be the mill pond itself.
