Developments During the Demolitions at Millend Mill

For more than twenty years, like many others in Eastington, I’ve watched what should have been one of the landmark buildings of the village, decay to the point where its future looked very uncertain. For a long time, Millend Mill presented a picture of increasing dereliction but, as most people are now aware, a new use has finally been found and the main building is being transformed into apartments.

Most of the buildings added to the main mill over the years, most in very poor condition, are being demolished, to be replaced with new housing. As things are now moving at quite a pace, it became imperative that these major changes should be recorded and documented before all of this social and industrial history was swept away. Greystone Construction were good enough to grant me (as a mill historian and long-standing member of the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology) unlimited access to the mill to record developments as they took place. Along with reams of notes and measurements, I have a portfolio of 400 photographs so far, along with plenty of questions!

The Background

There has been a mill on or near the Millend site for a long time. One was recorded here in the Domesday Book  and there have been a succession of mills on the site since then. The present building was built by Henry Hicks in 1818 as a woollen cloth mill, and this is how it stayed until it was sold in 1873. It was then converted to a corn and saw mill, then a maltings. The most obvious legacy from the latter stage was the distinctive large red brick malt kiln added to the front of the mill (recently demolished). This was followed by a further stint as a corn mill, before another switch to producing animal feedstuffs. After this, part of the mill was used for corn drying and general storage, before finally becoming the home of an antiques export company. Since their departure in the 1980’s, the mill has stood empty and decaying.

Initial Demolition and Initial Discoveries

So far, much of the main mill has been stripped of its floors and internal walls. The condition of all internal timber was appalling and in parts, roof trusses and floors had collapsed. Much of this has since been removed and some of the windows unblocked, letting in daylight for the first time in decades. It really is a surprisingly large and impressive structure inside, although there is clearly a huge amount of repair needed to the stonework of the main walls. But what sorts of things have so far come to light as work has proceeded and more has been uncovered?

Perhaps one of the most impressive discoveries came after the removal of much of the modern concrete ground floor, revealing the tunnels that still channel the Frome under the mill and the three large pits that originally housed the 15 ft diameter water wheels used to drive the mill’s machinery. Records suggest that there was a fourth, but where was it? The opening up of the middle wheel pit also revealed vestiges of a water turbine, quite a rarity in Stroud valley mills. There is no record of its existence, but nevertheless, there it is - another mystery to be solved.

Both of the long brick-built buildings flanking the mill stream at the rear of the mill are to go. To date, the building along the lane to Cress Green has been demolished, as has the engine house that formed part of that structure. Examination of these during demolition revealed interesting features but again, also raised various questions over their construction and uses. It turns out that this building, as well as its two-storey neighbour on the north side of  the stream, was much older than originally thought, both having been added back in the 1820s or 30s.

More Questions than Answers

There are other things yet to be resolved. For instance, in 1821, a Boulton & Watt steam engine was installed, one of the first in the region. But where was it housed? I have a suspicion where, but until some of the 1950s buildings on the north side are demolished, we must wait. It seems likely that as the various added-on buildings are stripped away, further interesting aspects of the mill’s history and uses will emerge. Hopefully, many of the mysteries will then be resolved.

Thanks to the kindness and encouragement of the developers, I aim to continue following and recording things as they progress - I will give you further updates in the coming months. This seems to be the right time to draw as much information together on what was once one of the village’s biggest and most important employers, so, if anyone has old photographs or memories of the Millend area and the mill in particular, I would like to hear from them.

Spring 2009:

Summer 2009

Since my first note in the previous newsletter, and as anyone passing the mill will have noticed, developments at Millend have continued to move at a pace. Demolition of the various buildings joined to the main mill has gone ahead, and much of the site has now been cleared.

As before, various interesting things have come to light. Equally, there are even more puzzles. Briefly:

The single storey building along Cress Green lane has been demolished, and more recently, the concrete slab on which it stood, broken up and removed. Along with an archaeologist from Cotswold Archaeology, I waited with interest to see what might be beneath it. Several things appeared. The first was two linked deep brick chambers that appear to have once formed some form of drainage system, perhaps from cottages that once stood on the hillside. And closer to the mill, the footings of a stone-built wall appeared in what would have been the middle of the (now demolished) building. This was made up of several courses of rectangular limestone blocks surmounted with a course of re-used pieces –  some were clearly stone window mouldings, probably from some long gone part of the mill. There was no indication of the wall’s function, so along with the drainage chambers, it was photographed, recorded and removed. The whole area has now been covered with crushed rubble as hard core for the two new houses to be built there.

On the opposite side of the river, all of the newer buildings tacked on to the mill were also demolished, not without some difficulty. The section where the large steel roller door was located proved to be particularly tough! Nevertheless, this, as well as the adjoining parts disappeared over the course of a few days. Even this unremarkable looking building proved to be more interesting than it might have been. The upper floor had once been lit by rows of windows (long bricked up), so clearly, this building was more than a simple loading bay when it was originally built. Local information suggested that it may have been added during the 1950s. However, a steel fire door that originally linked it with the adjoining earlier two-storey brick building had a different story to tell. Under many layers of paint was a maker’s plate. This was removed and carefully cleaned, revealing that the door had come from a Manchester supplier and was dated ‘August 1945’. So, clearly, this ‘modern’ building was older than thought and dated back to at least the 1940s if not earlier. Unfortunately, there were no indications as to what it was originally built for.

Once these ‘newer’ buildings had gone, the earlier two-storey building alongside the river was fully revealed. This disappeared at a remarkable rate and I was hard pushed to keep up with the demolition crew! Even though it had been bodged up and altered many times over the years, it still managed to reveal things of interest. Both floors of the building had originally been lit using numerous large iron-framed round-headed windows. When this was built (1820s-30s), local cloth mill owners were busy gathering in hand loom weavers from their cottages, and much to the latter’s disgust, grouping them together in specialised loom shops. This meant that the owners could now regulate their hours of work and monitor the quality of the cloth they produced. Looms took up a lot of space and needed a lot of natural daylight, hence the large windows. Perceived wisdom suggested that this building had never housed powered machinery. However, there were various indications that this was not the case, and that some form of activity requiring power from either the water wheels or the steam engine had taken place (although we can’t be sure at what period). Some of the roof trusses removed during demolition had once carried bearing housings for line shafting, and several beams also showed where the oil used to lubricate them had seeped into the wood. At a guess, I would suggest that this may have been connected with the mill’s later time as a corn mill, rather than earlier cloth manufacture.

The breaking up of the substantial concrete base of this group of buildings brought to light the lower parts of an earlier stone-built building underneath it. It was surprising that any of this had survived - early maps (of 1839 and 1873) showed a detached building around this point. Again, its function is not known but this one was almost certainly associated with the mill’s earlier cloth making phase.

Yet another discovery was made when work began on the existing stairway, built into the front corner of the mill nearest the road. Most of the steps and landings are of stone and brick, the entire structure probably being inserted into the mill around the mid 19th century. When the lower (wooden) steps were removed, it allowed access to the space beneath the first floor landing in goodness knows how many years. This revealed that the landing (which is made from one huge slab of stone) was supported on two massive cast iron beams. Closer inspection revealed that the ends were circular and that they were in fact, the main axles from old water wheels. It’s quite likely that these are remnants of two of Millend’s earlier water wheels. This was a brilliant find, one that took you straight back to its earliest period as a major cloth mill.

This brings me on to what has proved to be perhaps the most interesting thing to appear since the mill’s conversion got under way. Everyone will remember the large curved red brick maltings kiln at the bottom of the hill that stuck out from the front of the mill - this was demolished a few months ago. Once gone, all that remained was a floor comprising relatively modern concrete and a few flagstones. Once again, the archaeologist from Cotswold Archaeology and myself watched as the excavator began to scrape this away. I had hoped that we might find a few traces of a small, two-storey building that stood there before the kiln was built (c1895). However, what appeared was both unexpected and as it turns out, very unusual. As the excavator removed the surface, a pattern of red bricks began to gradually emerge. Eventually, the remains of a structure were revealed that had clearly been part of the maltings kiln. This is now fully visible and consists of a symmetrical layout of four triangular brick structures surrounded by various brick channels. In short, it is the remains of the furnace once used to heat the two upper floors of the kiln where barley was heated as part of the process of becoming malt for beer making. I have so far excavated parts of this and pulled out masses of broken kiln tiles (the upper floor were made of these – lots were later used to block the mill’s windows!), and lumps of anthracite (hard coal) burned in the furnace. I’ve even unearthed loads of barley grains, still surviving after all these years.

This discovery created a lot of interest and I subsequently arranged for a maltings expert to visit the site in order to discover exactly how the furnace operated. It now appears that this particular layout is something of a rarity, if not unique, and the expert has gone off to research it further. It’s hoped that the furnace base can be retained in some form as it helps to tell an important part of the mill’s story. As this part of the site is to be landscaped, it could possibly form a garden feature - I hope this proves possible. Some of the broken kiln tiles excavated from the furnace were badly burned (they shouldn’t have been!) and the suspicion is that the massive fired that gutted the mill during the 1920s was the result of barley being kilned on the upper floors catching fire. This spread into the main mill, destroying the interior and roof. Until recently, there were still charred beams that had been re-used inside the mill following its rebuild.

The on-site demolition has been essentially completed and there is now likely to be a lull in activity at Millend. The developer’s architect and engineers will be coming on site to begin preparing detailed plans for the mill’s new internal layout as well as assessing what’s needed to repair the stonework damaged (and often replaced with brick) after the 1920s fire. Watch this space.

Published in ECN 115   May/Jun 2009

And               ECN 116    Jul/Aug 2009