Riverside Mill To South Of Esholt Hall

1. 5111 ESHOLT ESTATE Lower Esholt

Riverside Mill to south of Esholt

Hall SE 1839 15/40E

II

1. Records of a mill on this site antedate the building of the hall and associate it with Esholt Priory, probably as a fulling mill. When the hall was built over the remains of the Priory in 1706-7 it would appear that the mill was rebuilt as a single- storey L plan structure against the bank and with a wing on 2 low arches over the goit. The architectural dressing of doors and windows indicate that the building was adapted as a feature of the park, the eastern block with its 3 rooms and fireplace as a summer house or gazebo and the south-west wing (at present filled with rubble) over the goit possibly serving as a bath house. The construction is of coursed gritstone with rusticated ashlar quoins as on the hall. The eastern range of "summer house" of 3 bays has a central doorway with massive rusticated surround and large tripled keystone to lintel. The flanking bays have large circular openings with raised ashlar surrounds punctuated by 4 keystones. Similar apertures are pierced in the west wall of the south-west wing over the goit. Flat stone slabs are used to roof the "summer house" as a terrace. Internally the 3 rooms are barrel vaulted, one containing a plain but heavy chimneypiece. The floors are stone paved and cobbled. This former "mill" is an important survival of an early garden building with the added interest of its adaptation of the original mill building on the site.

Listing NGR: SE1885239564