Shelsley Walsh Water Mill

Shelsley Walsh Water Mill

A brick watermill of around 1800 housing milling machinery of around 1700, with some 19th-century modifications including a new cast-iron waterwheel.

The mill stands at the west end of the home farm of Court House, which overlooks it from a slight bluff to the south-west. It is a rectangular structure of bright red brick with a slate roof and a dentil eaves course, comprising two storeys over a basement meal floor. The entrance to the stone floor is on the west side, where a central door with a mill stone set into the threshold is flanked by a pair of two-light casement windows. Similar windows light the east side of the mill where the ground falls away to expose the meal floor, which is entered via a door on the north side. A small hatch over one of the first-floor windows was inserted in the early 20th century to allow the mill machinery to be worked via a drive taken from a tractor. A late 19th-century iron drive shaft runs beneath the track between the mill and the barn to its east. Three-light casement windows (replaced around 2006) in either gable light the first-floor bin floor or loft, which is ventilated by gaps in the brickwork beneath the eaves course.

The late 19th-century overshot iron mill wheel, made by Turtons of Kidderminster, stands on the south side of the building in a stone-walled wheel pit which shows evidence of earlier wheel arrangements. The wheel was reset and its zinc buckets renewed around 2006. Brick steps up the side of the wheel pit were rebuilt in 2007. Water is delivered to the top of the wheel via an iron pipe which passes underground beneath the roadway past the mill. The water supply was originally from a mill pond, now infilled, which curved around Court House to the west. The tail race is channelled across the west end of the farmyard to the east of the mill.

The basement meal floor contains a full set of machinery including an axle tree, pit wheel and wallower, separated from the rest of the wheel house by a heavy timber-framed screen boarded on the interior side. On the reverse of one of the uprights is a well-carved IW (perhaps JW), with a cruder B carved beneath.

The stone floor, entered from the main west-side door, has wooden steps ascending to a trapdoor in the ceiling to the left of the door, with a pair of stones either side of the main shaft to the right. The shaft is the mill's most remarkable feature, being very finely finished with fluting down its length and elaborate stops beneath the crown wheel and lesser ones nearer its base. The drive machinery for the two stones and their wooden cases or tuns survives, although the case around the right-hand wheel had been partly dismantled for repair at the time of inspection. Two heavy spine beams support the floor above with closely-set joists.

The first-floor bin floor or loft is open to the roof, exposing heavy trusses with angled inner braces supporting the collar. Zinc-lined grain bins occupy much of the floor space, and there is a wooden sack hoist above. Hop sacking is pinned across the rafters for cleanliness.

A mill is first documented at this site in 1308. In 1654 there were three mills in the parish, with the other two standing near New Mill Bridge and at Forgemill Farm. It is likely that this is the site of the 14th-century mill. The mill received its brick casing around 1800. A power take-off for the adjoining farm buildings was added by Turtons of Kidderminster in the late 19th century, possibly when Montague CH Taylor acquired the Court and Farm around 1890. The mill remained in use until 1923. It is now owned by the Midlands Automobile Club which leases it to the Shelsley Water Mill Society, which is undertaking restoration works. The mill stands just to the north of the manor house, Court House (listed Grade II), and St Andrew's church (listed Grade I).