Clockey Mill

Clockey Mill

A water-powered corn mill of the early 18th century with a mid-19th century extension, located at Kingwater.

The building is constructed from roughly coursed sandstone rubble with dressed sandstone quoins, covered with stone slates and some asbestos patching. The extension has a modern slate roof.

The mill follows an L-shaped plan, formed by the original rectangular building oriented north-south with an external wheel pit to the south west, and a later rectangular extension to the north west.

The north west main elevation features a projecting gabled block on the right, probably a cart shed with storage above, and a plain rectangular entrance on the left. This entrance, with a stone lintel and chamfered door jambs, has been widened with the loss of the left jamb and insertion of steel and concrete lintels. A small window with a stone lintel sits in the upper right corner. The cart shed has a pitched roof, a single ground floor window with a 6-pane casement, and a centrally placed first floor loading door with a boarded wooden door. A cobbled area covers the entrance to both the cart shed and mill building.

The right gable displays a small aperture at the apex and the remains of the water wheel spindle and hub with rotted spokes extending over a stone-lined wheel pit. The wheel pit formerly housed an overshot wheel fed from the east by a water chute and discharging via a culverted tailrace to the west. Metal fixings for the chute remain in situ on the gable wall, which also bears grooved indentations from the wheel's rotation.

The left gable has a small ground floor window with stone lintel and sill, and a centrally placed first floor window with timber lintel; both contain 4-pane casements. The south east rear elevation has scattered fenestration including a first floor window with timber lintel lighting the milling floor, a small ground floor window with stone lintel, and a small blocked opening with stone surround set low in a central position. A further ground floor window with a 6-pane casement frame was formerly a door.

Internally, the mill is divided into three equal bays by an upper cruck roof structure incorporating two trusses with through-purlins and a ridge purlin; joints are largely trenched and lapped. The south bay retains milling machinery including the wheel spindle and a pulley positioned over an infilled pit containing the scant remains of timber framing relating to an earlier machinery configuration. Numerous holes in the south gable wall formerly housed additional machinery. The south bay also retains two of the original four wooden supports and a large lateral beam and wooden rail of the first floor mezzanine, which formed the milling floor and housed the millstones. Remains of a chimney flue stand against the west wall of the central bay. The central and north bays are open to the roof but were once floored.

The water management system included a dam, a pond, and a culverted tailrace. A single large intact millstone is set into the path to the adjacent house.

Documentary evidence records Clockey Mill in rentals dated 1704 and 1714, which document the transfer of the mill from Charles Earl of Carlisle to first George Foroster and then John Routledge, Yeoman. The 1714 rental refers to the Water Grist Mill at Clockey with its houses, buildings, dams, wears and ponds. Most smaller water mills in Cumbria were established between 1690 and 1730. North Cumbria was historically dominated by cattle farming with very little arable land, suggesting the mill may have produced animal feed from corn, beans, pulses and similar crops. The First Ordnance Survey map of 1895 shows the original rectangular building had been extended to the west by that date, likely occurring in the mid-19th century when the present house was constructed. The mill is thought to have continued in use into the early 20th century and in its latter years housed a hydro-electric generator.