Great Bardfield watermill and bridge, Great Bardfield, Essex

Summary

The remains of a watermill and adjacent bridge spanning the mill race dating from the early C19.

Description

MATERIALS: remains of a mill built in brick with wrought and cast-iron machinery. The associated bridge is of brick with one flint parapet.

PLAN: a rectangular plan orientated north to south spanning the mill race and divided internally by a water wheel pit in the centre with pit wheel chamber to south and a pair of spillways to the north. A bridge over the tail race projects from the mill and forms its eastern wall.

DESCRIPTION: the external brick plinth walls and internal sleeper walls of a former timber-framed watermill standing to approximately full height. The undershot waterwheel is in the centre with the pit wheel chamber to its south. The waterwheel chamber walls have been largely removed, but the southern one stands to part of its original height. A spillway runs bedside the water wheel on its north side. The waterwheel is of wrought iron with cast iron shrouds and metal buckets. The wheel is damaged and part of the shrouds and most of the buckets have been lost. The cast iron pit wheel is in situ with some supporting timber beams. To the north of the spillway is a second one, with evidence of its southern side having been adapted to house a turbine. Brickwork has been removed from the upstream entrance to the turbine chamber along with the sluice gate, probably following the fire. The spur wheel is in situ, mounted on a wrought iron shaft with a supporting timber beam. A plate with holding-down bolts, possibly part of the turbine mounting, is situated in the bottom of the chamber.

The northern wall of the mill is built into the side of the bridge. It returns to form the eastern wall of the mill. This eastern plinth wall has been raised to form a brick parapet for the bridge in the late C20. A late C20 timber footbridge crosses the mill race on the line of the western wall of the mill. This has tubular steel handrails and incorporates a sluice gate for the spillway beside the water wheel. The southern wall of the mill has been extended in the late C20 with a low brick wall on top forming a raised planter bed. This bed also continues along the south side of the mill race to form a flood wall between it and the mill house. There are original retaining walls to both banks of the headrace, and they have been reinforced with concrete in the late C20.

The bridge has two arched openings. Water from both the waterwheel and the spillway beside it discharge under the main segmental arch. This arch has been repaired in reinforced concrete on its western side in the late C20. Water from the turbine chamber discharges through a smaller arch to the north. The eastern parapet is built in random flint rubble with brick margins and one larger brick panel. It returns to form a pier for a field gate across the roadway at its northern end and terminates in a small brick pier at its southern end. Brick retaining walls project from both the north and south ends of the bridge along the sides of the downstream mill pond. At its end the southern wall curves westward to form the side of a trackway down to the pond.

History

There may have been a watermill on this part of the River Pant since the early C13 and there was a mill depicted on this site in Chapman and Andre’s map of 1777, fed by the current mill race with the original course of the river to the north. The most recent building was constructed in the early C19. The Smith family owned the mill from the 1840s and continued to do so until Thomas Samuel Smith closed it a few years before his death in 1950. Even in the last years of the mill’s operation horses were used to deliver flour and watered in the downstream mill pond.

The mill was constructed along with a bridge over the tail race and stands immediately adjacent to the mill house, an C18 timber framed house extended in the C19. To the south of this, beside the trackway to the mill, is a single storey red brick stable block, also of the early C19. Both these buildings are listed at Grade II. A single storey weatherboard-clad extension projecting from the northern end of the mill was built around 1900.

The early C19 water mill originally contained four pairs of mill stones driven by a breast-shot water wheel. To this a roller mill powered by a turbine was added, installed by Whitmore and Binyon in the 1890s. An oil engine was added to provide additional power for the rollers before 1922. The survival of a complete wheel-driven stone mill in working order along with a turbine driven roller mill under the same roof was unusual and the mill was first listed with the adjacent bridge on 21 December 1967. It was described as follows:

‘Early C19. The mill is timber framed, weatherboarded, roofed with slate. 5 bays facing E. 3 storeys and attic. E elevation, original casement windows of 6 lights, one on ground floor, 2 on first floor, 3 on second floor, and lucam with one strut missing. 2 plain boarded doors, and one more on first floor. N gable end, on ground floor one original casement of 9 lights and one replacement of 6 lights, 2 original casements of 9 lights on first and second floors, and one of 16 lights in attic gable. The frame is of high-quality imported pine, jointed and pegged, with primary straight bracing in walls, and a joggled butt purlin roof. It is complete with 3 pairs of stones and all working machinery. ‘

The bridge was described as ‘red brick, with E wall of flint rubble and red brick, spanning the tail race with one stilted segmental arch.’

By the 1970s the mill was considered to be 'the most remarkable mill in Essex to the industrial archaeologist, being a complete wheel-driven stone mill with under the same roof a complete turbine and engine-driven roller mill. Every bit of equipment is intact except the engine which has gone. There can be few more interesting examples of a C19 country mill in Great Britain'. (Hervey Benham, Some Essex Watermills, 1976, 54-5). There were proposals for it to be preserved and opened to the public, but the mill was burned down in a catastrophic fire on 3 April 1993 although the low brick walls supporting the timber structure survived. The extension was replaced by a timber shed a short distance from the remains. Some of the mill machinery was salvaged and most moved off site.

Reasons for Listing

The remains of the Great Barfield watermill and bridge, dated to the early C19, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as a physical manifestation of the use of multiple generations of milling technology in this rural corn mill.

Architectural interest:

* as the remnants of an early C19 watermill displaying the evolution of milling technology through the C19 and early-C20;
* as a good example of a traditional bridge of the early C19 which is integral to the functional design of the mill itself and offering access to the mill pond for the miller’s horses.

Group value:

* for the historic and functional group value the remains of the mill and bridge have with the adjacent Mill House and stables both listed at Grade II.

External Links

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