Woodfield Mill

SW BISHOP THORNTON COLBER LANE (west end, off) 7/19 Woodfield Mill

• II

Water mill, now disused. Late C18, rebuilt 1831. Coursed squared gritstone with smoother gritstone to sills and lintels. Graduated stone slate roof. 3-storey main block, with 4 first-floor openings, one blocked. 2-storey wheel-house of dressed gritstone with pantile roof attached to right. Main block: board stable door with 9-pane window to left, window blocked with rubble and a 9-pane window to right. Loading door above entrance with wooden supports for loading platform. Fenestration as ground floor. Second storey: a shorter 9-pane window to each bay, that to bay 3 blocked with brick. All windows have the top 3 panes hinged. End stacks. Wheelhouse: wide round-arched opening with well cut voussoirs, board door above. Lean-to addition to right not of special interest. Rear: upper 2 storeys only are visible as the building is built into the steep slope which forms one side of the mill pond. 9-pane windows to both floors. Left return: lean-to open-sided shed covers the gable-end of the building which contains a blocked doorway and fireplace with the initials J R carved on the mantle stone. Right return: the wheel-pit and wheel-house are incorporated into the gable end, with a further corrugated-iron shed with sloping roof built against the east side. Wheel-house has ashlar gable coping and inturned kneelers. The rear section of the roof has collapsed. The wheel does not survive, but there is some machinery remaining. In 1805 Samuel Gratton probably had a mill on this site, with 6 flax-spinning frames. In 1831 the mill was rebuilt and continued in use for flax-spinning as well as containing 3 pairs of grindstones. The wheel (breast- or over-shot) was 40 feet in diameter. The mill remained in use into the C20, a turbine having replaced the wheel at about that time. The mill-race, pond and sluices remain to the north and west of the building. Two other buildings on the site were probably a smithy and a warehouse and granary. B Jennings, A History of Nidderdale, 1983, pp 210 and 217.

Listing NGR: SE2358263404