Ashton Mill

A former water-powered corn mill, later adapted to form an electricity generating and water pumping station for the Ashton Estate. The building dates from the late 18th and 19th centuries, incorporating some surviving fabric from an earlier mill, and was then altered and extended around 1900. The electricity and water supply systems were designed by Walter Morris Thomas, engineer, for Lord Rothschild. The architect of the building itself is not known.

Materials and Plan

The mill is constructed of orange brick and coursed squared limestone beneath a Collyweston stone slate roof. It follows an original rectangular plan, later extended to form an L-shaped complex with additions to either end of the original water mill and a lower rear wing running at right angles to the main range. The original mill straddles the water supply channel leading from the River Nene.

Exterior

The main building rises to three storeys and spans seven bays. The front elevation features five glazing bar sash windows beneath flat brick arches on each of the lower two floors, with six upper floor window openings fitted with glazing bar casement frames. There are early 20th-century doors and doorways to the centre and left under shallow brick arches, and a central 20th-century door to the second floor positioned below a gabled and weatherboarded loading gantry. Blocked windows appear to the first floor on either side of centre. Evidence of a single-storey stone building survives at the right-hand corner of the main range. The ground and first floor brickwork appears to date from the late 18th century, whilst the upper floor appears to have been added or raised during the 19th century, as were the extensions to the left and right-hand ends.

The rear elevation is detailed in similar fashion to the front, with window openings fitted with glazing bar casement frames beneath flat brick arches. A lean-to to the left-hand side has a weatherboarded front, as does the 20th-century flat-roofed entrance extension at the centre of the elevation. Further right is a tall weatherboarded lean-to extending up to the cills of the upper floor windows. A railed and boarded walkway crosses the rear elevation, through which project the heads of three sluice mechanisms regulating the overflow water from the mill race. Water supply for the turbines flows into the turbine chamber beneath the centre of the mill, with controlling sluices located beneath the wooden walkway.

Interior

The main mill building was altered at ground and first floor level around 1900 to accommodate the electricity generating and water pumping and purification equipment. The first floor retains heavy bridging beams, some with timber props at mid-span, closely spaced joists, and boarded floors. Former apertures used during its corn milling phase for chutes, drives, and hoists are now boarded over. The upper floor occupies the roof space. The roof trusses are of queen strut form with collars dovetailed into the principal rafters. The trusses have secondary tie beams set above floor level, apparently to help create storage bins for grain prior to milling on the floor below.

The ground floor and original wheel chamber were remodelled and strengthened to receive twin turbines manufactured by Gilkes and Co. of Kendal, twin dynamos built by The Wolverhampton Construction Company, a Smith and Vaile pump, and two Alley and Maclellan pumps. The turbine drives powered line shafting which drove the dynamos and the water pumps. The mill also housed two Blackstone oil engines installed in the 1930s as replacements for an earlier engine, used to supplement the turbine drives in times of water shortage. All machinery, line shafting, and belt drives remain in situ, together with switch gear and control dials housed in a control panel on the south wall.

The east end of the mill houses water storage and water treatment tanks arranged on two levels. Each water pump had its own associated tank. One pump was used to pump river water to the estate water tower at Ashton Wold for the farms and water troughs. Another pump drew water from a well to filtration and chlorination tanks in a nearby field, and then to water softening and storage tanks in the mill borehole. The third pump transferred purified water to an intermediate reservoir and then to the water tower to be delivered by gravity to the estate dwellings.

History

The Rothschilds were the first landowners in the country to provide their tenants with both running filtered water and electricity. Lord Rothschild had employed the marine engineer Walter Morris Thomas to design an electricity generating station for his estate in Tring, a steam-powered installation housed within a former silk mill. At Ashton, Thomas was engaged around 1900 to design and install a state-of-the-art electricity generating station together with a water supply pumping station, both powered by water turbines. The mill operated until it became more economical to supply the estate with power and water from national supply grids. The machinery remained unused in situ for many years before undergoing restoration in the late 20th century as part of a museum project centred on the mill.