Sele Mill is a late 19th-century mill building in Hertford, England. It has been converted into apartments. A blue plaque on the building () commemorates an earlier mill on the site, the country's first paper mill.

History

For most of its history, the mill used the power of the

River Beane The River Beane is a short river in the county of Hertfordshire, England. A tributary of the River Lea, it rises to the south-west of Sandon in the hills northeast of Stevenage and joins the Lea at Hartham Common in Hertford. Watermills ...

, a

chalk stream Chalk streams are rivers that rise from springs in landscapes with chalk bedrock. Since chalk is permeable, water percolates easily through the ground to the water table and chalk streams therefore receive little surface runoff. As a result, th ...

which joins the River Lea at Hertford. A watermill on this site is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086 when it was valued at 2 shillings. Sele at this time was a separate manor from Hertford. Its other resources included ploughland and meadow, but it appears to appears to have been a very small settlement: the recorded population was two households. In the late 15th century it was converted into a paper mill by an entrepreneur called John Tate. As far as is known, this was the first paper mill in the country. It appears to have gone out of production around 1500,Richard L. Hills, ‘Tate, John (c.1448–1507/8)’,

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 200
accessed 24 June 2015
Subscription or UK public library membership required. and the facility was used for grinding corn again. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1890 and was rebuilt. The 18th century miller's house survived the fire.

Mill race

River Beane, Cedar Close Weir in Hertford - geograph

Although water power is no longer used at the site, there is a 20th-century labyrinth weir on the River Beane designed to produce a head of water for the

mill race A mill race, millrace or millrun, mill lade (Scotland) or mill leat (Southwest England) is the current of water that turns a water wheel, or the channel ( sluice) conducting water to or from a water wheel. Compared with the broad waters of a m ...

. There is a programme of works to improve the ecological health of the river and it has been proposed to modify the weir which in its current state poses a barrier to

fish migration Fish migration is mass relocation by fish from one area or body of water to another. Many types of fish migrate on a regular basis, on time scales ranging from daily to annually or longer, and over distances ranging from a few metres to thousa ...

References

{{coords, 51.7977, -0.0880, display=title Buildings and structures in Hertford Papermaking in the United Kingdom Watermills in Hertfordshire Watermills mentioned in the Domesday Book Weirs on the River Beane

History

Mill race

See also

References