Stockwith Mill, Hagworthingham, Hagworthingham, Lincolnshire

Summary

A water-powered corn mill with wheel and attached dwelling, all of around 1800.

Description

A water-powered corn mill with wheel and attached dwelling, all of around 1800.

MATERIALS: walls are red brick, and the roof is new clay pantile. Doors and windows are as mix of timber and uPVC. The water wheel has an iron centre and rim with timber spokes.

PLAN: the mill and attached dwelling are in a rectangular main block which faces south-east and is orientated south-west / north-east. It is around 20.4 metres long and 6 metres deep. The mill is at the south-west end of the block and the house, attached to the mill by a narrow linking bay, is to the north-east. A wing extends north-west to the rear of the house forming an ‘L’ shaped plan. There is a single storey lean-to extension to the rear of the north-west wing, and a second single storey lean-to extension on the rear elevation of the house, south-west of the north-west wing. The water wheel sits in a brick housing directly in the River Lymn which runs immediately south-west of the mill. The river flow is managed via a sluice to the west of the wheel. Just downstream of the wheel, the river passes under a footbridge and then widens to a pool in the south.

EXTERIOR: the mill and mill house are connected by a narrow linking bay. The buildings are two storeys under a C21 pitched clay pantile roof, with gable ends to the north-east, south-west and to the north-west rear wing. The ridge height of the mill’s roof is slightly higher than that of the roof covering the house and link. Walls are red brick in English Garden Wall Bond, with brick segmental arches over doors and windows. Windows are a mix of timber and uPVC casements with some from the mid-C20 and others more modern. The mill house has brick chimney stacks in its three gable end walls, though the south-western stack is enclosed by the linking bay.

The front, south-east facing elevation has the mill at the south-west end and the house at the north-east. The mill section has a single window to each floor, both at the south-west end of the elevation. The first floor window is a single casement positioned over the double casement ground floor window. There is a wide doorway to the mill off-centre towards the linking section. The link section has a door at ground floor level with a single window immediately to its north-east, and a double casement window above. The windows to the link are C20 insertions. The house is three bays with a central ground floor doorway flanked by triple casement windows, with at first floor level three two-casement windows centred over the ground floor openings.

The south-west gable end of the mill hosts the water wheel which has a brick housing and sits in the River Lymn. The only opening is a single casement window located centrally at first floor level.

The rear, north-west facing elevation of the mill has a window at ground floor level. The linking section is solid. A shallow single-storey lean-to with two windows abuts the rear wing where it extends to the north-west. There is one window at first floor level just before the projection of the rear wing. The gable end of the rear wing has two casement windows at first floor level, and a larger single storey lean-to covering the extent of its ground floor.

The north-east gable end is solid except for a window just north of the chimney at ground floor level. The north-east side of the rear wing has a single window on the ground floor.

INTERIOR: not inspected, but available sources indicate that the mill has a first floor. On the ground floor are a pitwheel and several shafts, hoists and pulleys in what appear to be positions that would have allowed them to function when the mill was operational. The house has been recently refurbished and retains few historic features. However, some internal doors appear to be original, there is a red and black quarry tile floor to the sitting room and the ground floor fireplaces and fire surrounds in the bedrooms could date to around 1800.

History

Stockwith Mill is located on the east bank of the River Lymn and north side of Bond Hays Lane, one mile north-east of Hagworthingham village. It is a non-operational water-driven corn mill with an attached house. The vertical water wheel sits directly in the River Lymn, where the water flow is controlled by a sluice. The mill and dwelling appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1888. There are two outbuildings, one closer to the house and mill which also appears on the first edition OS, and a later one of around 1900 closer to the road. There is record of a mill on the site in the early C15 where it is mentioned in the will of John Copuldyk of Harrington, though the present mill is apparently of much later date.

Up until the C18, watermills were typically single-storey and were often attached to the miller’s house. The decades either side of 1800 saw the construction of many new multi-storey watermills. These had attic storage feeding to the milling floor below, then below the milling floor the flour was bagged and dispatched on the ground floor. This is the case at Stockwith where the mill is a building of two stories under an attic, suggesting a date of around 1800 for the mill with its attached dwelling. A small linking section attaching the mill building to the house encloses a chimney on what was one gable end of the house, raising the possibility that originally the mill and house were separate buildings.

The mill had been a part of the Harrington Hall estate until its sale in 1919, and the house has been a private dwelling since the second half of the C20. In the late-C20 the kitchen was extended and upgraded to trade standard allowing the house to be used as a tea room, and it continued in this function until the early-C21. The house was extensively refurbished in the early-C21 when a new clay tile roof was added.

The mill is one of several in the vicinity which has been considered as possible inspiration for the 1833 poem ‘The Miller’s Daughter’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) who lived in nearby Somersby.

Reasons for Listing

Stockwith Mill, Hagworthingham, a water mill and attached house of around 1800, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural Interest:

* the mill building retains its wheel and machinery, a rare survival that will allow a good understanding of the manufacturing processes carried out on site;

* the mill building is the focus of the special interest of the site, but the house adds to the interest as an old brick building which facilitated the use of the mill by providing onsite accommodation for the miller.

Historic Interest:

* the buildings give insight into the small scale production of corn flour in the C19 on a site where milling had probably been carried out for many centuries previously;

* although there is no primary evidence to support the claim, the mill is popularly associated with the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson who lived in nearby Somersby;

* group value: the house and mill building, and to a lesser extent the detached outbuildings, have strong group value in showing the functional relationships between each other, illustrating the operations of a rural mill.

External Links

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