Very photogenic

 You don't need a particular reason to visit Heron mill ....try it!

Time warp

Today Rowena and I explored 4 mill sites. 

 

Two are now houses, one is a garage where I take my car for its MOT, the lift being positioned right where the mill wheel would have been -a brick shadow high up on the wall blocks where the head race once tumbled through the wall onto the wheel. The fourth site took us back to the past, a silent and still  wheel with wooden buckets like sieves surrounded by the equipment associated with milling and on upper floors rusting bicycles and children's ride in toy cars from the 50's onwards. Nearby glass milk bottles in their metal carrying basket, butter churns, dishes for  preserving eggs  in Isinglass, milk kits and milking equipment all wait on the floor, put on oneside as they were no longer needed in and around the 3 floors of well worn and oiled quiet cogs.  

 

Grist to the Mill

From hopper

At Heron Corn Mill the stones, wheels, cogs, teeth, belts and woodwork have been restored by the experienced hand and eye of Martin Watts, Stuart the apprentice millwright has enjoyed this learning curve and know the day has come to turn wheat into flour  on redressed stones. It is raining cats and dogs outside, the eager water rushes down the launder and turns the wheel. The mill comes to life, grain is poured into the hopper, the stones whirr and crush and the fine flour is delivered in even pulsing shots into the sack,  an air of apprehension has turned to relief and excitement, the whole building is alive with movement and sound, differing rhythms hum and chatter throughout. There is something very comforting about the mill in motion, you physically and mentally become part of the experience it takes over your body and senses.   

to sack!

Bob Parkin arrives - he maintained  Pye's Mills and farms for over 30 years.
We sit down for the first of our Time Share sessions over sandwiches and flapjack the conversation ranges through the location of mills, the status of millers, water rights, sustainability and the restoration of the mill.

                                                           Wow! feel the quality  Stuart

     Grist from the mill!

Finding the source-looking for threads

The story so far.

During the research stage of this project when we were looking at the potential for 'A river runs through it', I visited the Kendal records office and the libraries local collection also the Armitt library in Ambleside.

Together with Audrey -the mill manager, Stuart the millwright, Bob Parkin one of the trustees and Jill Wesson the daughter of the late  Percy Dobson who formally owned and ran the Comb Mill at Milnthorpe as a horn comb works and then moved over to plastic, we visited the present working plastic comb mill. 

 

This initial research gave us [ Heron Corn Mill and myself]  the confidence to know that there was much to be revealed during this 12 mth project.

The project started the week of the 25th July, already Audrey and I  engaged with Beetham villagers on a hot sunny Saturday selling bags of flour milled at Little Salkeld  at the Annual Sports Day- telling them aboout the project and asking people if they had memories or photographs of  Heron Corn Mill or others. Yesterday Stuart and I explored the outfall from Killington Lake, the Bela River starts its life as Peasey Beck rising on Lambrigg Fell and flowing into Killington Lake. We made our way back down the lanes looking at possible sites for remnants of  past mills. John Somervell's book 'Water  powered mills of South Westmorland was our inspiration and source material for mill sites.