Lowertown Mill

Lowertown Mill

A mill with adjoining former millhouse, built in the 17th century and remodelled in the 18th and 19th centuries. The waterwheel was made by Harvey of Helston.

The building is constructed of painted rubble with dressed granite quoins, some jambstones and lintels. The roofs are steep grouted scantle slate with gable ends on the left side, otherwise hipped.

The plan is L-shaped. The longer arm of the L is the earlier range, comprising two storeys including the former miller's house. The right-hand part was remodelled and heightened in the 19th century to create a taller first floor with a working attic above, returning at right angles to the front right-hand side. A large overshot waterwheel survives beside the right-hand wall.

The earliest evidence of 17th-century origins comprises a chamfered granite jamb and lintel to a former wide doorway (now a window) at the far right of the main range, together with a through passage position within the former miller's house. The miller's house on the left has an unheated room to the left of the former passage and a larger heated room to the right. The L-shaped mill adjoins to the right and is undivided on each floor.

The 19th-century machinery and fittings survive substantially intact. The ground floor retains the timber framework for drive machinery for two pairs of millstones, used alternately for different grades of fineness and set into the floor above. On the first floor are sack hoisting machinery and hoppers filled from the attic. The roof is steep, providing working space in the attic, and within the front wing is a large grain hutch set into the attic floor. Later machinery operated by electricity also remains. The floors and roof structure are 19th-century. Still in working order is the sack hoisting pulley and belt with hand-operated clutch allowing a sack to be hoisted to the attic through an automatically opening and closing hatch.

The south-east front is two storeys. The right-hand part is taller and returned with a hipped end at the front right. The former miller's house on the left has a doorway left of centre and small windows either side. The first floor walling is a 19th-century rebuild with one first floor window opening. The mill has a doorway on the left with a window above. Just to the right the wall is taller, and a weatherboarded gable end rises above the house roof, containing a two-light casement to light the attic. A former doorway is situated near the angle with the wing, with another window above, and the wing at the far right has a window opening to each floor at the front.

The right-hand side wall is blind except where pierced for the waterwheel drive shaft. The overshot waterwheel is approximately twenty feet in diameter with oak spokes, wooden buckets and cast-iron wheel segments bolted together.

The interior is largely intact since the 19th century. Lowertown Mill, also known as Tregonnack Mill, is a particularly complete and unaltered example of a mill with adjoining miller's house. Anvower Mill stands across the road.