Wellesbourne Watermill is a fine historic
flour mill near
Wellesbourne,
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
on a
domesday
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 manusc ...
site. Situated on the
River Dene
The River Dene is a small river in Warwickshire, England.
It is a tributary of the River Avon, Warwickshire, Avon, which it joins at Charlecote Park. The headwaters of the River Dene rise on the western slopes of the Burton Dassett Hills and f ...
, the mill is a Grade II
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
and is described as "A very complete example of a mill and mill house".
History
Formerly known as Byford Mill, it was rebuilt in 1834. It ran commercially until 1958, latterly using a
belt drive
A belt is a loop of flexible material used to link two or more rotating shafts mechanically, most often parallel. Belts may be used as a source of motion, to transmit power efficiently or to track relative movement. Belts are looped over pulley ...
from a
traction engine, the wheel last being used in 1939.
The mill office door carries a date 1785 which formerly belonged to a
post mill
The post mill is the earliest type of European windmill. Its defining feature is that the whole body of the mill that houses the machinery is mounted on a single vertical post, around which it can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. All p ...
which stood in the adjacent field. The mill house is 18th century, thus considerably older than the present mill building.
In 1988 the watermill was restored to working order
by the Hamilton family, predominantly Sir Andrew Hamilton, with millwright David Nicholls and the Chiltern Partnership, and is still owned by the
Walton Estate. It is not currently open to the public. The adjacent mill house is now a private dwelling.
Machinery
The internal wheel is
breastshot
A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or bucket ...
and is unusual in that it carries three sets of clasp arms around the timber
axle
An axle or axletree is a central shaft for a rotating wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to the vehicle, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In the former case, bearing ...
. It measures diameter and wide. An iron
pit wheel
Pit or PIT may refer to:
Structure
* Ball pit, a recreation structure
* Casino pit, the part of a casino which holds gaming tables
* Trapping pit, pits used for hunting
* Pit (motor racing), an area of a racetrack where pit stops are conducted
...
is driven off the wheel axle and meshes with an
iron
Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...
wallower of . The
spur wheel measures and drives two
stone nuts of diameter.
See also
*
List of watermills in the United Kingdom
The use of water power in Britain was at its peak just before the Industrial Revolution. The need for power was great and steam power had not yet become established. It is estimated that at this time there were well in excess of ten thousand waterm ...
References
Grade II listed buildings in Warwickshire
Watermills in England
Stratford-on-Avon District
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