Darnley Cascade once powered the Grist Mill in the early 1800's. Today water flows over layered rocks and is measured as the highest above sea level of all the waterfalls in Hamilton at 223 metres, although its drop is a mere 4 metres making it the smallest of cascades in Hamilton.
You can see remnants of the old Grist dam and off into the horizon is the newer Christie dam. Darnley was a name given by the man who founded Crooks Hollows, James Crooks. He was a Scotsman whose hero was Lord Darnley.
In 1911, the Crooks sold the mill to the Stutts. (see Darnley ruins). Some to this day call it Stutts Falls.
I don't know if it was the gloomy gray skies, or the wind whistling through the trees around me, but I felt very melancholy to think that tragedy had occurred in a setting so beautiful.
In the early part of the 1800's, Crooks Hollows was at the centre of some progressive industrial growth in Upper Canada. Named after James Crooks, its founder, who saw that Spencer creek had a lot of potential in the town to build and grow upon.
During the war of 1812, James Crooks, who saw the soldiers in the area were having a very difficult time, had built the Darnley Grist Mill with the hopes of producing flour for bread. James Crooks saw the Spencer creek to not only power the mill, but to provide water for the crops as well as drinking water. He obviously was a visionary. Darnley Mill was the first of several businesses that had developed. Soon a distillery, blacksmith shop and a general store opened its doors.
Ten years later, the old grist mill was made into Upper Canada's first paper mill. But Crooks sold it off because of lack of power. This is when I find the story gets a little strange. The paper mill had passed through three hands (Helliwell, Ellen Bansley, Robert Sanderson) before it was eventually sold to Mr. Stutts in 1878. James Stutts and his sons ran the business for 7 years. Until one gloomy gray day such as this one, when the boiler had blown the roof off the boiler house as well as the roof of the main building killing one of Stutts sons' John.
Although
Darnley Mill continued to run for years after, it was once more brought
down for good after a fire which gutted the building in 1943, never to be rebuilt again.
Where I stand in and among the ruins taking pictures, you can sense the isolation and the bleak remains of this town. Although there are beautiful homes and quaint little stores at the hairpin of Old Brock road and Crooks Hollow Road, this town was forgotten about after the railroad had bypassed it altogether. Nowadays, you can visit the ruins of Darnley Grist Mill and see the remains of a man's dream one brick at a time.
Other links: Darnley Cascade, Crooks Hollow.
