The Mill

This is an 1800 watermill with an attached mid-19th century granary, located on Station Road in Snettisham. The mill was built as per an inscription, and a plaque above the entrance reads: "This mill was erected in a time of scarcity by voluntary subscription for the common benefit of the neighbourhood. AD 1800." It includes a Latin inscription which translates to "Seek justice, and do not transgress the laws."

The mill is constructed of carstone with brick dressings and quoins. The lower part of the south facade is squared carstone, while the rest of the original building is coursed rubble with brickwork to the tail race and bypass channel. The granary's walls are of random laid carstone. The roofs are tiled with pantiles. The mill building is two stories high with an attic floor, while both the mill and granary have separate hipped roofs. The easternmost bay of the mill houses the waterwheel. The south facade features a boarded stable door, a shuttered two-light window, and an unglazed two-light window to the wheel bay. A brick semicircular relieving arch with a flush tympanum, set within a timber framework, covers the tailrace. There is a shuttered two-light window to the floor above. The granary has three cart entrances beneath segmental brick arches and boarded double doors. A single boarded double door with railing to mid-height is on the upper floor. The east gable end has a large doorway across the bypass channel, leading to the wheel chamber, with a glazed two-light casement window above. A sluice is located on the mill pond side of the bypass channel. The north facade features one two-light casement window with glazing bars and a boarded door. The granary has two two-light windows with horizontal glazing bars.

The interior retains all its machinery, which is in working order. The waterwheel has ventilated metal buckets and an integral pitwheel, driving a fine timber vertical drive shaft via the wallower. There is tentering gear to two pairs of stones, and a sluice crank to the north. A great spur wheel drives two sets of stones via cast iron stone nuts, and unusually, also drives a further set of stones on the attic floor above, using a timber stone nut. The lower two pairs of stones are over-driven, an uncommon feature in watermills. A crown wheel clamped to the great spur wheel drives a horizontal facetted shaft, powering a roller mill and the sack hoist. The mill roof structure includes wedge-tenoned butt purlins, lapped tenons in common mortise, one tie beam, while the granary roof has dove-tailed collars and double tie beams.

The mill's historical interest lies in being built by public subscription on a cooperative basis to benefit the whole parish.