The first steam engine successfully used to drive a cotton mill directly was installed in 1785 at Robinson's Mill near Papplewick, Nottinghamshire.
Early cotton mills normally relied on water wheels, which forced owners to build beside suitable rivers and streams. Steam engines had appeared in mills earlier, but their role was often indirect: a Newcomen engine at Shudehill Mill in 1783, for example, pumped water between reservoirs so that a water wheel could continue turning.
The 1785 installation was significant because a Boulton and Watt rotative steam engine supplied motion directly to the mill's machinery. Rotative engines developed from James Watt's improvements and made it possible to place mills closer to coal supplies, workers and urban markets rather than depending entirely on fast-flowing water.
This milestone should not be confused with Manchester's later expansion of steam power. Peter Drinkwater's Piccadilly Mill, opened in 1789, was Manchester's first cotton mill directly powered by steam. By the early nineteenth century, steam engines were helping transform Manchester into the centre of Britain's cotton industry.