Clapton Mill (Lockyer and Son), with aqueduct to north east

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WEST CREWKERNE CP CLAPTON CLAPTON ROAD (east side) Clapton Mill (Lockyer and Son), with aqueduct to north east

GV II* Water driven flour mill. Rebuilt 1864, on site of C12 mill. Local stone cut and squared, Ham stone ashlar dressings; Welsh slate roof with plain bargeboarded gables.

Three storeys with attic, the main block of four bays. Chamfer-mullioned windows without labels, all three-light, with cast iron casements having rectangular panes. Metal plate reinforcements at beam ends showing externally. To lower bay one a boarded door in moulded flat-arched surround, and to bay two plain doorways to first and second floors. Above doorways is a projecting timber-framed, corrugated iron clad, sack hoist, on timber brackets resting on stone corbels, with pitched, gabled roof, simple window and trap doors.

Against the south gable a small single-storey building having segmental-arched openings to two casement windows, brick south gable; this is the diesel engine house, presumably of 1931, the date of the Ruston and Hornsby engine still used to boost the water-wheel drive when necessary. Behind are the two apertures of the wheelhouse, a small segmental-arched opening, and the larger three-centred arch over the millstream itself, which runs the length of the building at the rear: a two-light window set high in the mail south gable, and two others below. Against north gable two lean-to buildings, the smaller against the larger.

The rear, east elevation in brick. Attached to the north-east corner the launder, or aqueduct carrying the upper stream of steel plate conduit on brick piers, 20-30 metres length. The wheel in cast iron, of 6.4 metres diameter and about 3 metres across, Dorset made but repaired by a Martock firm; is both overshot and breastshot: the machinery it drives is essentially that installed in 1864, with appropriate renewals, and uses Derbyshire and French millstones. The internal structure essentially timber, with cast iron columns. Original ladder stairs, with ten bin stores in attic.

The Lockyer family moved in as tenant millers in 1870,and bought the mill in 1901 as it is still run only by a Lockyer father and son (July 1986), it has not been necessary to implement changes to meet with current "Health and Safety at Work" legislation. The mill would probably not survive such alterations, or at least retain its current interest and importance.

Graded at II* for surviving machinery.

Listing NGR: ST4137106378