Elsing Mill Including Wheel House And Wheel Adjoining East

This is a water mill, built in 1809 as a paper mill on the site of an earlier mill, and later converted into a house in the late 20th century. It is located on the River Wensum. The building is constructed of painted brick and weatherboarded timber framing on the second floor, with a pantile roof featuring shaped bargeboards to the gable ends. Brick gable end stacks are present. The layout is L-shaped, with a wing at the rear of the right (southwest) end, a wheel house at the left (east) end, and an outshut on the right (west) end. It comprises three storeys and an attic. The north front has four windows, with 20th-century casement windows; those on the ground and first floors are segmentally headed. A central doorway is flanked by another doorway on the first floor to the right. A gabled hoist housing cantilevers out above the eaves to the right of centre. The single-storey wheelhouse on the east end is weatherboarded with a painted brick gable end and pantile roof. It has two windows with boarded shutters and a plank door to the rear. The wing at the rear of the main mill has a gable end. The interior features unchamfered cross-beams on hanging knee braces. Some timber framing is exposed at the rear end and on the second floor. Tenoned purlin roofs are present, but the main range lacks purlins. While most of the original machinery has been removed, the sluice gates and gearing in the rear wing and wheelhouse remain. A low-breast undershot triple wheel with cast iron naves, arms and rings, and a wooden shaft and floats survives intact. The mill operated as a corn and seed crushing mill from 1834, serving as the Bylaugh estate mill until its sale in 1917. Water power was replaced by electricity in the 1930s, with stones being later replaced by a hammer mill.