A mill pond (or millpond) is a body of water used as a

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

for a water-powered mill.

Description

Mill ponds were often created through the construction of a mill dam or

weir A weir or low-head dam is a barrier across the width of a river that alters the flow characteristics of water and usually results in a change in the height of the water level. Weirs are also used to control the flow of water for outlets of l ...

(and mill stream) across a

waterway A waterway is any Navigability, navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other ways. A first distinction is ...

. 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 A mill race, millrace or millrun, mill lade (Scotland) or mill leat (Southwest England) is the current of water that turns a water wheel, or the channel ( sluice) conducting water to or from a water wheel. Compared with the broad waters of a m ...

, which together with weirs, dams, channels and the terrain establishing the mill pond, delivers water to the mill wheel to convert potential and/or kinetic energy of the water to mechanical energy by rotating the mill wheel. The production of mechanical power is the purpose of this 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".Ruth Becker
Titanic witness Cromford mill pond

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Footnotes and references

Footnotes

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).

External links

{{Authority control Hydraulic engineering Ponds Hydrology Topography