Mill pond

For other uses, see Mill Pond (disambiguation).

Hagley mill pond on Brandywine Creek in Delaware which fed the mill race in back, to supply power to the DuPont gunpowder mills, an important armaments industry in the history of the United States.

A mill pond (or millpond) is a body of water used as a reservoir for a water-powered mill.

Description

Mill ponds were often created through the construction of a mill dam or weir (and mill stream) across a waterway.

In many places, the common proper name Mill Pond has remained even though the mill has long since gone. It may be fed by a man-made stream, known by several terms including leat and 'mill stream'. The channel or stream leading from the mill pond is the mill race, which together with weirs, dams, channels and the terrain establishing the mill pond, is the power producing purpose of the civil engineering hydraulic system.

The term mill pond is often used colloquially and in literature to refer to a very flat body of water. Witnesses of the loss of RMS Titanic reported that the sea was "like a mill pond".

File:Cromford mill pond.jpg

Panorama of Cromford mill pond. Cromford, county of Derbyshire, England.

Footnotes and references

References

• mill pond. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mill pond (accessed: September 7, 2013).
• mill pond. Dictionary.com. Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mill pond (accessed: September 7, 2013).
• leat. Dictionary.com. Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/leat (accessed: September 7, 2013).