Former mill building and millpond at The Mill, Southam, Gloucestershire

Summary

A water-powered corn mill (disused), possibly based on an earlier dwelling, C17 with C18 alterations; and associated mill pond.

Description

A water-powered corn mill (disused), possibly based on an earlier building, C17 with C18 alterations; attached house of the C18 and later; and linking building of the mid- to late C19.

MATERIALS
The MILL is constructed from squared local limestone, with brick to the south gable end, with slate roofs. The HOUSE is similar, with plain tile roofs, and the LINK is partly roughcast rendered.

PLAN
The buildings form an irregular L-shaped group, with the house lying adjacent to the mill at an acute angle, and joined by a later link. The mill is orientated north-south, with the lower mill pond and sluice lying to the east of its southern end.

EXTERIOR
The mill is a three-bay range, of two floors and attic, built into a steep slope, with a one-bay wing extending to the rear from the southern bay, accommodating part of the mill machinery. The building is set partly below the current ground level to the main, western elevation. There are very large quoins to either end, and a stone buttress with two offsets to the southern end. The narrower left-hand bay houses the entrance to the lower ground floor, a two-centred pointed-arched doorway with chamfers, housing a C18 plank door with iron studding. The central bay has three-light timber mullioned windows under timber lintels; these are C21 examples replicating the earlier C19 windows, to lower ground and upper-ground floors; and a single-light gabled dormer to the attic. The right-hand bay has an external stair leading to a wide upper, ground-floor opening with a C18 door to the left and a timber-clad and half-glazed section to the right. The lower ground floor has a small, shuttered opening to the right, lighting the machinery bay. The steeply-pitched roof is covered in slates set in diminishing courses; there is a stone stack to the left-hand bay. The southern gable end was rebuilt in brick in the C18, probably to accommodate the updated and enlarged machinery and the increased forces on the building. There are small, one and two-light timber casements set within the upper ground floor and attic. An overshot waterwheel was formerly set against this wall; the retaining wall of the millpond which adjoins it to the right is constructed from very large limestone blocks, and bears the scars of previous accommodations for the overshot waterwheel, estimated to have been perhaps 18’ in diameter and 2’ wide. The sluice gate has been replaced. The wheelpit has been largely infilled. To the rear, due to the steep slope into which the mill is built, only the attic rises above ground. To the left is the gabled rear wing, with a central door in the gable, housing a C19 door.

INTERIOR
The mill is well preserved. The northernmost bay appears to have been in domestic use since its construction, as it is supplied with fireplaces to lower and upper ground floors, and the upper floor retains part of a former partition with a doorway between this bay and the working bays of the mill. This might indicate that the mill began its life as a domestic building, or more likely that this part was occupied as the miller’s dwelling. Although the waterwheel and its pitwheel have been removed, much of the rest of the machinery has survived. The lower ground floor of the mill has heavy, deeply-chamfered beams to the ceiling and a Hurst frame (internal framework that supported the gears to prevent damage to the building from the vibrations of the workings); this extends across the southernmost bay from the main range into the cross wing to the rear, and protects and supports the extensive suite of machinery, all except for the iron wallower (gear wheel which engages with the pit wheel) constructed from apple wood, which dates from at least the C18, though an earlier date has been postulated and is currently (2015) being investigated. The main shaft, great spur wheel, wallower and tenter boards, and one of the stone nuts, all survive in situ in the lower ground floor, together with the chutes and openings to the floor above. The stone stair at the rear survives to its original height, with a modern timber stair above and beyond, to the attic. A large, stone buttress rises through two floors at the south-eastern corner. The upper floor has further machinery, including controls for the speed of the waterwheel, one of the earlier two bedstones, and gearing and shaft for a flywheel which powered a chaff cutter. This floor has a fireplace at its northern end, with chamfers and stopped monolithic stone uprights under a bressumer incised with apotropaic (evil-averting) marks. A doorway has been created from a window to one side of the fireplace, leading into a modern link to the house. The ceiling has heavy beams which are the tie beams for the roof trusses, and large joists. The attic retains evidence of the sack hoist and parts of its mechanism. The roof, which dates from the C18, has paired principal rafters with twin trenched purlins, high collars and heavy tie beams. The roof over the cross wing has undergone some modification and strengthening.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES
The structure of the lower mill pond survives to the east of the mill: the water now runs through a diverted course within the silted pond. The pond was lined with massive limestone blocks, the upper courses of which remain visible. The sluice gate has been replaced.

History

The earliest surviving record of a mill on this site in documents dates from 1676, when Widow Cooke of ‘ye Upper Mill’ is mentioned in a document whereby Mill Close, the land to the south of the mill, is set to her from common land. The mill must already have been an established business by this date, and the Cook(e) family (recorded locally from the C16) was evidently prospering, with its members owning houses in the parish taxed for up to 3 hearths in 1671-2.

In 1722, the mill, which initially had one millstone, was sold by William Cooke to Mr Etherton, and this is likely to be the point at which the mill was altered to accommodate new, more extensive machinery with a second stone, resulting in the oak and applewood apparatus for two stones which survives today; it dates from the C18, though whether this early in the century remains to be established. Mr Etherton purchased a ‘great oak’ for timber in 1738, which could have been converted to the Hurst frame and roof which survive in the building. It might equally be the case that the modifications resulting in the installation of the current milling equipment date from the later C18 – the mill, Mill Close and all five of the springs which feed the mill ponds were sold in 1793 to Thomas Bridges Hughes, a London barrister. The southern gable end wall, adjacent to the waterwheel, was rebuilt in brick at the same time. The house which stands adjacent to the mill (not included) probably dates from this period – the evidence of the surviving historic fabric points to a date in the later C18, and the date of 1793 is incised in a dressed stone which formed part of the earlier entrance doorway; the house might have replaced an existing timber-framed building set on the heavy stone plinth which exists as the base of the present building.

In 1842, the mill was sold again, and is recorded at this date as having two stones. In the same year, the tithe map shows the footprint of the mill and house much as they are today, with the absence of the angled link building which was added in the second half of the C19. They were accompanied by a range of outbuildings to the west, since demolished. The mill continued in use, but the occupiers of the site diversified the activities carried on there; it was leased by a family of maltsters in 1832, at which time the adjacent house appears to have been a malthouse. By 1851 the miller, Thomas Robinson, was also farming the land, and a bakery and brewhouse (now demolished, but probably sited to the south of the house, and later converted to a wash-house) had been established by 1860. When the entire holding was sold in 1898, it included the Mill Farm, comprising the mill with two stones, The Mill Inn and 22 acres which included a small dairy farm, extensive orchards, and all the woodland which surrounded the millponds. By this time the brewing and selling of beer had evidently become a significant activity. The range which is now the house is described at this point as a house and two cottages; these, along with the building linking the house and mill are all shown on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1884.

The mill appears to have gone out of use for flour production after the turn of the C20, as the beer house and later the inn became the primary activity on the site. A tea garden was set up in the 1920s on the lawn above the rear of the mill. The land continued to be farmed through the first half of the C20, with the water-powered mill machinery used to run a chaff cutter. In the mid-C20 the mill became fully redundant.

Reasons for Listing

The mill building at The Mill, Prestbury, a C17 building with C18 alterations and mill machinery, with the associated mill pond immediately to its south-east, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: the building retains C17 fabric including a good, pointed-arched stone doorway, along with high-quality work of the C18, including its roof;
* Evolution: the alterations to the C17 building in the C18 are clearly legible, and speak clearly of its evolution, which is well documented, from a single-stone mill to a two-stone mill, and the consequent adaptations;
* Degree of survival: despite the loss of the external waterwheel, the mill retains its Hurst frame and oak and applewood internal machinery of the C18 almost entirely intact, an increasingly rare survival of this period, which aids understanding of the operation of a small-scale water-driven corn mill.

External Links

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.