Old Corn Mill

OLD CORN MILL, LOW BRADLEY

This is an 18th-century corn watermill with early 19th-century alterations, possibly with medieval origins, converted to a cow byre in the early 20th century.

Materials and Construction

The building is constructed mostly of local thin-bedded Millstone Grit rubble sandstone, with larger flags used for roofing. Some areas employ coarser rubble. Massive, dressed gritstone is used for quoins and lintels. The dressed stonework of the wheelhouse carries masons' marks. Interior timbers include oak beams and later imported softwood.

Layout

The mill is orientated north-west to south-east and comprises a two-storey, five-bay main mill building with a gable-end cart opening to the south-east, and a two-storey, two-bay cart house/store to the north-west. An enclosed waterwheel house sits on the side beneath a catslide roof. A later two-storey extension above the culverted tailrace extends south-eastward from the wheelhouse.

Exterior

The south-west elevation has slightly scattered fenestration. The first floor has four openings: the second from the left is a taking-in door, whilst the other three are windows with plain stone surrounds dressed with broad tooling typical of Georgian work. The windows retain remains of joinery showing they were nine-pane fixed lights with narrow glazing bars. The window cills all sit just above a building break marking the original wall top before the roof was raised. The lower stonework is more uniformly coursed and built of flagstones; the upper stonework includes some flags but is mainly coarser rubble, incorporating several large, minimally dressed stones.

The ground floor has five main openings. A nearly central, stone-framed doorway has a well-dressed lintel incorporating mortice slots cut in its current front face. This lintel is a re-used stone, possibly originally part of a sluice—one of several similar re-used stones in the building. To the left is a three-light mullioned window with a flat-faced stone surround that is channelled, possibly to receive horizontal iron bars. This window also retains remains of multi-paned joinery. A smaller undivided window lies to the left, flanked by stone-framed ventilation holes. Similar, blocked ventilation holes flank an inserted doorway to the right of the central entrance. This inserted doorway differs from other openings in lacking stone framing to the sides. To the right of the inserted doorway is the final window, which is stone-framed but more rectangular than the almost square first-floor windows. This window also retains joinery remains.

Adjoining to the left of the mill building, slightly set back, is the two-storey, two-bay cart shed/store. This has two stone-framed windows retaining joinery remains at first floor, and a large cart opening below to the right with a replacement steel lintel. This building may also be of more than one phase, as the upper walling uses more uniformly sized and flagstone-like stones than the lower part, which is poorly coursed and includes several large undressed stones.

The south-east gable has a central inserted cart opening formed by a segmental arch of flags with large spring stones above quoined jambs. At the time of inspection, one of the oak planked and ledged doors remained on its hinges, the other lay fallen to the side. Above to the right is a first-floor window that cuts the line of the original, slightly lower roof line. The gable end is quoined up to the original height of the side walls. To the right is a two-storey extension infilling the corner between the gable end of the mill and the end of the set-back waterwheel house. This extension is built of a single leaf of stonework, with a stone-framed doorway to the left and a roughly inserted window to the right. Above are two further windows. The one to the right is stone-framed and retains a timber, multi-paned casement; that to the left is at a higher level and appears inserted. It also retains joinery—a six-paned fixed light.

The north-east elevation mainly consists of the wheelhouse, which is quoined and is blind apart from a now-blocked, stone-framed opening marking the axle position of the waterwheel, and an inserted window at the southern end of the wheel pit which would have lit the start of the tailrace. This window was probably inserted following construction of the two-storey extension infilling the corner between the wheelhouse and the gable end of the mill. This extension covers a large opening in the end of the wheelhouse that now forms an internal doorway.

The north-western gable is mainly covered by the rising ground of the former mill pond dam. There is one window high in the gable end of the store room.

Interior

In the mill, the ground floor of the south-eastern bay is divided off with an inserted wall including an internal doorway, with the area to the south of the gable-end cart entrance separated off by a further inserted wall to form a small office. The rest of the mill building was undivided except for the early 20th-century timber-built cattle stalls. These cattle stalls, although both well built and preserved, are not considered to be of special interest in a national context.

The upper floor is supported by four substantial, roughly hewn oak beams which support joists and wide floorboards. The ceiling in the northern corner is lower and reinforced with massive softwood beams supported by H-section iron posts. This is the site of the milling machinery, with probably two sets of millstones on the floor above. Various sockets, notches and other features in the surrounding walls and timberwork provide evidence of the arrangement of mill machinery. This includes a blocked circular opening through to the cart shed/store to the north-west, possibly to allow for a drive belt to power a winch to the upper floor of the store. A low doorway through the north-eastern wall is at the position of the axle of the waterwheel. Next to it is a Jacob's ladder fixed to the wall to provide access to the upper floor.

This upper floor is on three slightly different levels, with the milling floor forming the northern quarter being slightly lower and the south-eastern bay, bound by the ground floor inserted wall, being slightly higher. The gable wall to the cart shed/store to the north-west has a couple of window openings, one being blocked, and also a blocked taking-in doorway. The roof structure of the mill building is early 19th century, of imported sawn softwood kingpost trusses supporting ridge and double purlins.

The cart shed/store has openings through to the mill building, most of which have been blocked and are noted above. The wall also includes a couple of exposed, sawn-off substantial oak beams considered to relate to staging for former milling machinery. The building formerly had an upper floor as evidenced by joist holes. The roof structure has a single roof truss supporting ridge and double purlins. It is a traditionally jointed kingpost truss of partially hewn timber.

The wheelhouse encloses a largely infilled waterwheel pit approximately seven metres by two metres, with additional space around the pit to provide maintenance access. Due to conditions at the time of inspection, it was not possible to determine the position of the head race (which will be through the north-western wall) to determine the type of wheel. The infilling of the wheel pit may preserve remains of the wheel and may also include dumps of milling equipment cleared during the conversion of the mill into a cow byre. Any such archaeological remains will be of significance.

The south-eastern end of the wheelhouse has a doorway through to the extension. This opening has a re-used stone for a lintel incorporating mortice slots (interpreted as part of a former sluice). It appears to have been an original opening into the wheelhouse and would have been designed to provide light for maintenance work on the wheel and for clearing debris from the start of the tailrace. The extension retains its upper floor accessed via a ladder.

Immediately adjacent to the western corner of the cart shed/store is a stone post marking a footpath. This post is another morticed stone interpreted as part of a former sluice.

History

The current mill building is believed to be on the site of the medieval manorial mill for High Bradley, serving both High and Low Bradley following the merger of the townships around 1284 to form Bradleys Both. The Bolton Priory Compotus accounts for 1314 record repairs to the mill at Bradleys Both, and a manorial mill is again noted in the early 16th century. In 1752, J and T Barret are listed as millers; in 1804 it is Jonas Sugden; Cooper and Sugdon in 1822; and in 1838 Jonas Sugden junior.

The mill is shown on the Enclosure map of 1791 together with a narrow mill pond to the north-east. The Tithe Award map of 1843 illustrates several alterations including a new triangular mill pond to the north of the mill, the shortening of the earlier mill pond, as well as the addition of the wheelhouse and an attached building (thought to have been a store room) to the original mill. The 1854 Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1848) shows this arrangement together with a new leat feeding the original reservoir from Bradley Gill to the south-east. The building is labelled Bradley Mill (corn) and is still named as such on the 1891 map, but by the time of the 1909 Ordnance Survey map the mill had probably ceased operation as it is no longer labelled. It is believed that by this time it was owned by the Chester family of the nearby Ghyll Farm who converted the building into a cow byre with feed storage above. The store room on the north side of the building was ruinous by the 1938 map with only two walls still depicted, which were cleared later in the 20th century.

Designation

The old corn mill is designated at Grade II as an example of well-preserved pre-1840s vernacular architecture. It is a nationally rare surviving example of a water-powered cornmill that still retains evidence of the arrangement of the milling machinery. The building is of additional interest for being multi-phased and preserving evidence of earlier mill buildings on the site.