Farm House And Outbuildings, High Mill Farm

High Mill Farm comprises a watermill, corn mill and miller's house, now used as farm buildings. The main structures date from the early 19th century.

Construction

The buildings are constructed of coursed dressed sandstone, mainly herringbone tooled, with pan tiled roofs.

Layout

The principal buildings form a north-south range. At the centre stands the mill, with the miller's house (which evolved through at least four phases) to the north and a stable and cart shed to the south. The mill race, now infilled, approached from the west, with the tail race presumably culverted under the yard to the east. Additional agricultural buildings lie to the north, east and south-west.

The Mill

Exterior

The east elevation features two taking-in doors and two windows with four-pane fixed lights at first floor level, all with keystoned lintels. At ground floor level there are two double doors with later inserted lintels. An end stack to the north serves the attached miller's house, brick-built above the ridge. The gables are raised and coped with ornate kneelers. Attic windows (two to the south, one to the north) have keystoned lintels.

The west elevation has a first floor doorway with near level access provided by raised ground surface above the culverted mill race. A keystoned window sits to the north. Below this is another keystoned window that is now blocked, and one that remains open but is inserted.

Interior

The ground floor is unequally divided into two rooms. The narrower southern room housed the waterwheel, which from scarring from the wheel and the position of the mill race inlet appears to have been an overshot wheel of approximately 3.5 metres in diameter. The wheel pit is now infilled. The larger room housed most of the gearing for the milling equipment, mainly sited on the first floor. Although the gearing has been lost, evidence of the mill's arrangement is retained in the timber work of the floor structure, the supporting beams and posts. The line shaft with belt drive wheels is of some interest, although it is considered to be a later insertion, probably later 19th century. The floor is flagstone and there is a blocked doorway into the attached miller's house.

The first floor comprises an undivided room open to the rafters, with the southern bay being lofted. There is a former connecting door into the attic of the attached miller's house. The roof structure has double purlins supported with two A-frame trusses with double collars, joints being pegged. The tie beams and collars retain evidence of the arrangement of machinery, and the roof structure includes additional beams that do not function as part of the roof but include bearings and attachment points.

The Miller's House

Plan

The house began as a single-celled, single storey cottage with attic, possibly originally with a north gable entrance (now an internal doorway). It was extended to the east with an unheated outshut under a catslide roof. A further extension to the north added a two-bay, two storey house with an east entrance leading to a dogleg stair in the southern bay, with heated rooms on ground and first floor in the north bay. The stair extends to the unheated attic room. The house was further extended to the east with a single bay one-and-a-half storey outshut.

Exterior

On the east side, the original cottage has a later roof dormer. Its outshut has a single door and window, both with modern joinery. The house has wedge lintels to the door and first floor window, the latter retaining a four-pane sliding sash. The outshut has small windows with modern joinery and a later dormer.

On the west side, the original cottage has a large ground floor window with a keystoned lintel. Above there is a window that extends into a dormer, possibly adapted from an attic loading door. The house has centrally placed windows at ground and first floor with wedge lintels and modern joinery. To the right there is a small stair window with a 20th-century sliding sash, and a large 20th-century roof dormer.

The north gable is raised and coped with a shaped kneeler to the west and simpler kneeler to the east (the outshut). It has a ridge stack and three inserted windows, with that at first floor retaining a four-pane Yorkshire sash. The south gable is raised and coped with shaped kneelers.

Interior

The ground floor retains six-panel doors, while those to the first floor are four-panel, all retaining original narrow architraves. The main first floor room retains an early 19th-century cast iron hob grate and flanking cupboards with four-panel doors. The roof structure of the house is of sawn timber with pegged purlins. The roof structure of the cottage was not exposed at the time of survey.

Subsidiary Buildings

Cart Shed and Stable

Attached to the south of the mill building, this structure has two round-arched cart openings and two doorways with wedge lintels. The gable end is raised and coped with shaped kneelers. The rear (west side) has been altered and extended. The stables have been altered with the insertion of stone slab pig feeders.

Building to South-West

This low two storey building is built into rising ground. Its south gable has a keystoned doorway and shaped kneelers. The east wall has two further keystoned doorways. The side walls show clear evidence of rebuilding with rough concrete lintels and brickwork above. The replacement corrugated roof is not of special interest.

Building to the East

This single storey stone-built agricultural building had lost one of its shaped kneelers at the time of inspection. The roof is of typical mid-19th century or later iron bolted trusses.

Range to the North

A long single storey range that has undergone modern renovation and has been re-roofed.

History

Historically, High Mill Farm was known as Scalby High Mill. Although there is documentary evidence of a mill in Scalby in 1164 (when it was valued at £6 and owned by the Crown), this cannot be securely linked to High Mill. However, High Mill is identified as one of the three Scalby mills in existence in 1609 that were sold by the Crown to Edmund Ferrers and Francis Philips. Ferrers and Philips, both of London, were speculators specialising in mills, becoming the largest owners of watermills nationally after the Crown.

The current mill building is thought to date to about 1810, following the completion of Sir George Carley's five mile sea cut linking the Derwent to Scalby Beck. Although this cut was designed to relieve flooding on the Derwent, it also improved the water supply to the mills at Scalby. High Mill was advertised for sale in 1833, detailing that it had three pairs of stones, a corn screen, fan and a barley mill. The mill is marked as a corn mill on the 1854 Ordnance Survey map and appears to have continued working into the early 20th century, with BS Wilkinson listed as the miller in 1925. Marked as a mill on the 1914 map, by the 1928 map it was marked as High Mill Farm.

High Mill is a good example of a small rural improved watermill of the type that was developed from the late 18th century until the mid-19th century. In contrast to their single storey predecessors, these were characterised by having the milling equipment concentrated on the first floor, well lit with glazed windows, with most of the gearing on the ground floor below. Later watermills tended to be larger still, borrowing innovations from textile mills. The overall quality of the build of High Mill appears good for a small rural mill, displaying some architectural pretension. The single bay cottage may have been built for the previous mill building. The two bay house is probably slightly later than the mill building because of the change in lintel style. The later outshut is of poorer quality, perhaps reflecting the falling income of the mill with the reduction of the price of flour following the ending of the Napoleonic Wars, or possibly following the repeal of the Corn Laws in the mid-19th century.

The building is designated at Grade II because it is a complex of buildings mainly dating to before 1840, with the additional interest that the complex includes a good example of an early 19th-century improved watermill displaying some architectural pretension and retaining some evidence of the original arrangement of machinery. It also has historical interest in that the current mill buildings are thought to be on the site of an earlier watermill dating back to at least 1609.