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

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

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 A waterway is any 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 languages. A first distinction is necessary b ...

. 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 A leat (; also lete or leet, or millstream) is the name, common in the south and west of England and in Wales, for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct dug into the ground, especially one supplying water to a watermill or its mill pond. Othe ...

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, 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