Description

WOTTON UNDER EDGE

238/0/10006 VINEYARD LANE
05-FEB-09 Park Mill Farm

II
A former mill house, later a farmhouse, dating from the C18 with alterations and extension in the later C19. There is a ruined range of industrial buildings attached to the south east.

MATERIALS: The house is constructed from roughly squared and coursed stone rubble with dressed limestone quoins, set under a clay tile roof with brick stacks and a small rear extension in brick. The ruined mill buildings include substantial amounts of blue lias stone blocks.

PLAN: The mill house is a single-depth rectangle on plan, oriented north west-south east, with an L-shaped extension at the north-eastern end. The ruined former mill buildings run in a linear range from the south-eastern end of the house.

EXTERIOR: The building is of two storeys and attic, and is four bays long; there is a lean-to extension to the north-west, behind which is the rear extension. To the main elevation, the fenestration is irregular, with large areas of blind walling. This elevation has a mixture of eight-over-eight C18 sashes, two-over-two horned sashes of the C19, and some casements of the later C19. The sashes all have exposed sash boxes, and are set under timber lintels with timber or stone cills. The entrance door for the house is set towards the north-western end, and has a C20 timber canopy porch. To the south-eastern bay, formerly the industrial end of the building, there is a wide ground floor opening, with a similar opposing opening to the rear; the attic window, in contrast with the rest of the range, is a raking half-dormer. The rear elevation has a row of C18 eight-over-eight sash windows set under the eaves, with two-over-two horned sashes of the C19 below, and in the later C19 extension. There are large blocked openings at ground floor, first floor and attic level, including a taking-in door to the first floor, indicating that a large part of the house was formerly in industrial use.

INTERIOR: The interior has two contrasting elements. The south-eastern bay remains entirely industrial in character, with the rooms, one on each floor, unimproved and unheated. They are characterised by wide door openings, exposed chamfered beams of large section, and an enclosed timber stair with very plain treads and risers set against the gable wall and rising through the building. The remainder of the house bears evidence of its conversion to a farmhouse in the latter years of the C19. There is a roughly symmetrical plan, with principal rooms to either side of the central stair hall, which has a late-C19 stair with turned newels and plain stick balusters. Several fireplaces of the late C19, with timber surrounds and cast-iron grates, survive in situ. There is internal joinery of the C18 and C19. The brick extension to the rear has exposed purlins and late-C19 doors.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: To the south-eastern end of the house the ruined remains of the MILL RANGE is attached. The buildings run in a linear arrangement across the top of the DAM, which is built from a mixture of lias and limestone blocks topped by several courses of very large fired clay blocks. The leat ran from the north-eastern corner of the dam through a stone-built SLUICE, which partly survives, with very large long-and-short-work stone blocks standing to a height of around 2m. The vestigial remains of the timber sluice gates are in situ. The former FULLING MILL is identifiable in the ruins; it remained water powered, though the site of the wheel is not readily discernible other than through maps. A large stone stack, which appears to have risen to the attic drying room, survives to a height of around 4m. Iron-clad openings for drive gear are evident in this and the adjacent buildings. At the far south-eastern end of the range is a small brick building, perhaps a stable, which dates from the later C19 and together with a further small group of brick outbuildings to the south-west of the house, is associated with the conversion of the site to a farm.

HISTORY: The current buildings on the site appear to date from the C18 and earlier C19, though the mill may have originated rather earlier. There have been attempts to identify the site with the 'Berkemyll' detailed in the 1537 lease book for Kingswood Abbey, a nearby religious house which was surrendered in 1538 and demolished in the 1540s. There is no precise evidence for the original position of the abbey or its mill, and it has not been possible to say with certainty whether this, or one of the other two cloth mills in the village, was the Berkemyll, though from documentary sources and some evidence in the fabric it remains a possibility that this mill could be identified with Park Mill. The oldest extant structures on the site appear to be the dam and associated sluice. It seems likely that these were constructed perhaps as far back as the C17, and may incorporate some earlier fabric. These would have been associated with a mill building situated at the head of the dam. The mill house was constructed to the north-west during the C18, and the earlier mill buildings replaced or remodelled in the C18 or C19. The mill is recorded as being owned by woollen cloth manufacturers Samuel and William Long, in a trade directory of 1830, and another woollen cloth manufacturer, John Smith, in 1842. An L-shaped extension to the north-west end of the mill house was made before 1882, at which time the buildings were still in use for the production of textiles. By 1903, however, the mill is marked as disused on the Ordnance Survey map, and it had been converted to a farm, with some associated remodelling of the former mill house. The deeper range of industrial buildings running south-eastwards from the house were still standing until the mid-C20. A description from the 1950s confirms the evidence of a photograph of the same period, when the buildings comprised seven elements, running from south-east to north-west: a counting house; a part-domestic and part-industrial block in ruins; a store house; a three-storey weaving and spinning shop; a water-powered fulling mill with a cloth-drying room over; another small industrial section; and the mill house. Soon after this the remaining mill buildings were partly demolished, though at the time of inspection (December 2008) all had some walls and other features still standing to varying heights, including a large stack in what was the corner of the mill, and openings with cast iron elements to house drive gear running throughout the range. The large mill pond is now dry but its steep banks and associated dam and sluice survive to the rear of the farmhouse.

SOURCES: Jennifer Tann, Industrial Archaeology: Gloucestershire Woollen Mills (1967) 99-100
E S Lindley, 'Kingswood Abbey - its land and mills', in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society (1956) 96-7

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION:
Park Mill Farm is recommended designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
* The building is a former mill house, dating from the C18, with some alterations in the C19, which was part of a much larger textile mill complex
* The house retains its C19 layout and much of its interior and exterior detail, indicating its evolution from a partly-industrial mill house to a farm
* Its industrial origins are clear in the ruined mill buildings to the south, and the unimproved southern end of the house which appears to have been part of the functional element of the complex
* The large mill pond, dam and sluice, dating from earlier than the house and surviving mill buildings, remain in situ and provide context for the house and ruined mill buildings, whose processes are still indicated in the surviving fabric
* The pattern and much of the fabric of the mill buildings remain legible, with details indicating how power was carried through the range

Reasons for Listing

The Secretary of State has decided that the Building Preservation Notice shall be upheld, so Park Mill Farm has been designated in Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
* The building is a former mill house, dating from the C18, with some alterations in the C19, which was part of a much larger textile mill complex
* The house retains its C19 layout and much of its interior and exterior detail, indicating its evolution from a mill house to a farm
* Its industrial origins are clear in the ruined mill buildings to the south, and the unimproved southern end of the house which appears to have been part of the functional element of the complex
* The large mill pond, dam and sluice, dating from earlier than the house and surviving mill buildings, remain in situ and provide context for the house and ruined mill buildings, whose processes are still legible in the surviving fabric
* The pattern and much of the fabric of the mill buildings remain legible, with details indicating how power was carried through the range

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26672148

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair by Hunt. Roger ( 2008 ) Hardcover
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  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  For the Record
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  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy