Of Wind and Water: mills in the greater Seale parish. Part two.

                         

This second part of the discussion on mills follows the development of the first known watermill at Barratt Mill.  Alongside the advent of improved watermills, windmills began to be introduced into the greater parish.  All of these have now entirely disappeared, leaving little or no physical trace that they ever existed.  Indeed, in two cases, Donisthorpe and the first Netherseal windmill, the only record that a windmill ever existed on the site is through the field-name evidence.  The Chilcote windmill, mentioned in passing below, has also completely disappeared. The Barratt Mill windmill site has documentary and map evidence and the later windmill at Netherseal survived into the twentieth century, alongside documentary evidence that includes photographs.

Author’s impression of a medieval post mill based on an extant mill in Hessenpark, Germany. Overseal windmill is likely to have been of a similar design. Cloth sails would have been attached to the sail frames to catch the wind and provide the energy to power the mill.

So far, I have discovered four lost windmills in the parish, alongside the two known watermills.  The watermills were at Barratt Mill, now lost, and at Netherseal where the mill building, the mill fleam and millpool survive.  The story of Barratt Mill to circa 1900 and the lost windmills will be covered here; a later article will tell the story of the Netherseal watermill and the demise of Barratt Mill.

 

The earliest reference so far to the specific name Barratt Mill is in a document dating to 1609,[1] although the name Barratt Pool is mentioned in 1343, as noted in part one, and few instances of further evidence survive in the written records.  Difficulties in identifying the mill site arise as no maps were made to support Domesday, nor were maps drawn up for the records prior to the 18^th century, with Anno 1735 written on the map and therefore the date given by Leicestershire Records Office (LRO) of the earliest known map of the area.  This map, held in the LRO, depicts some areas of Overseal and the only one of these shown in detail is Barratt Mill.[2]

 

There are a small number of quite early maps extant depicting Seale, the earliest known of which dates to c.1578.  Unfortunately, this very beautiful Tudor map, held in the DRO, with the villages drawn in three dimensions, does not extend far enough east to show the mill or pool.  John Speed’s map of Leicestershire dated 1610 is too small scale to indicate the mill pool.  The next available map in the sequence, mentioned above and held in LRO, dates to c.1730-1735.  The mill pool at that date was depicted in a rough teardrop shape and was quite large, stretching north past Gorsey Leys into the fields below Overseal, an area known as Brooky Flats.  The mill complex is drawn in plan view and shows a lane leading to the mill from the road through Short Heath.  The main mill building backs onto the pool, with a smaller building shown just on the south side.  On the east side of the Hooborough Brook a windmill is depicted with the words Wind Mill next to it.  Across the southern edge of the pool is written Barret Mill Dam, and to the south of the complex is written Barratt Mill Holms (holms meaning small eyots or islands in the marsh).  We can safely assume that the land to the south of the mill site was marshy, perhaps with standing water year-round and with small islands of dry land rising from it, in fact, it still is in wet weather.  The fields either side of Hooborough Brook to the north of what would have been the level of the mill pool and running along the west side of Slackey Lane (not yet a lane in 1730) still have clear signs of mediæval ridge and furrow field systems.

 

Stafford Record Office (SRO) has a map of Overseal and is a much larger scale.  The date given for this map by SRO is c.1800 but that is unlikely.  Many of the people mentioned on the map as landowners were deceased before 1800, some of the buildings have been added later in a different colour ink and landowners’ names have been struck through and the new landowner added as property changed hands.  The hunting lodge built by the Rev Dr Thomas Gresley in Seal Wood in 1764 is missing, indicating that the map was drawn prior to that date.  This is very likely the lost original Enclosure Award map of 1755 (with later additions).  Whatever its origins though, for our purposes we can state that it dates to the second half of the eighteenth century and shows Overseal in great detail but only includes the western half of the mill-pool, crucially missing off a depiction of the dam and causeway from the eastern half of the pool.  What are clearly marked, despite an ink smudge, are the watermill buildings themselves.  Barratt Mill is at this time in the possession of Lord Huntingdon, Henry Hastings 11th Earl of Huntingdon.

A part of the probable ‘lost’ Enclosure Award map of Overseal held in SRO showing a section of Barratt Pool and mill.

John Prior’s map of 1777 is to a much smaller scale but clearly shows Barratt Pool and two mills, a water mill and a windmill, with much of the mill complex part of the Hastings family estate.  The map also shows Barratt Mill dam creating the mill-pool, fed by the Hooborough Brook.  

The gaps in the long years between each map can be partly filled in by looking at the documentary evidence.  The Overseal windmill is named in a survey of the village undertaken in 1626, probably for the sale of the manor to Gilbert Morewood.  There is no description of the mill and the specific site is not named, although it is unlikely that more than one mill site existed between the known dates, placing Overseal’s windmill not on a higher point of the village, but on the Woulds, a fairly high area anyway as described above.  There is no extant trace of the windmill at the Barratt Mill site and this is in keeping with post-mills of an earlier period, and to an earlier design.  These early windmills did not have the brick roundhouse and kerb of later mills and traces of them are very easily lost.  It may be that the later dwelling houses known to have existed well into the Twentieth Century occupied the former windmill site.  These houses too are long gone, with no evidence of their having existed visible on the ground.  It is not known how long prior to the 1626 survey that a windmill had occupied the site, although windmill technology was known in England from at least the 13^thcentury.  These windmills were called post-mills, as they stand on a single central post, which allows the mill to be turned to face into the wind and cause the sails to turn.

Without further evidence we have to place the windmill construction on the site to somewhere between the late Tudor period, and obviously no later than 1626, and was still in situ at least as late as Prior’s map of 1777, a minimum lifetime of 150 years and perhaps much longer.

Part of Overseal, The Woulds and Barratt Pool, from John Prior's 1777 map of Leicestershire. Note the road layout, the route of the lanes across the Woulds, different to today’s roads which were redesigned and laid out in 1815, after the enclosure of the Woulds in 1801.

 

Local cartographer John Smith of Packington was engaged to provide a survey of Overseal and Netherseal in 1785 and this map is held in DRO.  The original accompanying ‘Plan of Particulars’ is lost, but a copy by John Morewood Gresley in 1854 is extant.  The map depicts the Barratt Mill site (item 75), and the copy of the Plan lists it as ‘House, Mill, Garden & Croft’, so we can be sure the mill was in use at that time.  The Plan of Particulars copy also gives us the landowner, Lord Huntingdon, and for the first time we get the name of the miller, tenant to Lord Huntingdon, one John Tims.  The windmill, if it was still extant at this date, would have been east of the Hooborough Brook and is not depicted on the map.

Barratt Mill detail from the 1785 Plan of the Lordships of Overseal and Netherseal by John Smith of Packington.

That Donisthorpe too had a windmill must be considered here.  An 18^th century map of the village has the field name Windmill Close at a high point of the village near the junction of Acresford Road and Hill Street.  Nothing more is currently known of Donisthorpe windmill, when it was built, by (or for) whom, nor when it fell into disuse.  All we can say with any degree of certainty is that it was gone by the time the map was created, leaving only a field name as evidence of its existence.

Windmill Close on an 18th century map of Donisthorpe.

 

Netherseal too has a ‘lost’ windmill.  Situated near the junction of Clifton Road and Sandy Lane. The possible site of a second windmill in Netherseal was brought up through the village history forum on social media.  The location of a former windmill site ay the western end of Clifton Road, Netherseal, had been passed on as oral history and investigating the veracity of the oral information reveals that this kind of information can have very deep roots.[3]  An examination of the 1785 map and plan of particulars reveals the field names for field number 507, 539 and 540 as Windmill Field, Upper Windmill Hill and Lower Windmill Hill respectively.  The remains of a mound believed in the oral version of the story to be the mound upon which the windmill was sited in the southernmost corner of field 506 (opposite the junction with Clifton Road) is still visible on the ground but the plan of particulars has a blank for that field name. (See below).  As noted above in regard to the windmill at Donisthorpe, the field names – and quite remarkably – folk memory, retain a memory of what is lost from the landscape, and presumably the Clifton Road/ Sandy Lane windmill was of similar date to the Overseal windmill, namely from the Tudor period and had been lost during the course of the intervening years.  Prior’s 1777 map indicates a windmill to the south of Netherseal watermill, in the fields between Netherseal and Chilcote, and a watermill at Stretton-en-le-Field.  It does not show a windmill at the Clifton Road/ Sandy Lane junction, nor at the Donisthorpe site.

The site of the former windmill on Clifton Road/ Sandhole Lane junction, fields 506, 507, 539 & 540.

Netherseal Windmill on Hunt's Lane from the 1843 tithe map.  Author’s photograph of the original, held in DRO and accessed 18^th May 2016.

 

The Netherseal windmill that is remembered was situated on Hunts Lane.  This windmill is described in the Derbyshire HER under record entry Monument/MDR7132[4] as a post-medieval mill (1540-1900CE) and is described as follows:

 

The windmill at Netherseal was about 3/4 of a mile north-west of the village. The mill is not listed by Farey in 1808 but is shown on the first OS map in 1834 when it appears as a post mill, although at that time it was in Leicestershire. It was offered for sale by auction in 1841 according to the Derby Mercury of November 3 as follows: 'Newly erected Post Mill with round house and seven acres of land, near the village of Netherseal'. In 1843, under the Tithe Award, the mill and adjacent property was owned by Reuben Stevenson, with the family retaining control throughout its life. It was worked until about 1905 (when it appears as a 'windmill' on the OS map). Several photographs taken at the turn of the 19th century give a clear picture of the mill. The white painted, horizontally boarded buck, which has a curved roof, sits on the top of a tall, slender, brick round house with external buttresses. The round house, most unusually, had four round windows just below the curb (assuming it was a Midland type mill). The skirt does not appear to be complete but the tailpole and ladder were still in place. There were four sails, two common and two spring, complete with shutters, mounted in a double poll end. In 1994 the site, behind Windmill Farm, did not show any evidence of the mill structures, but a circular hedge enclosure, some 25 yards in diameter, denotes its location. There are several fragments of broken grey millstones which appear to have been about 5ft 4ins diameter in the garden, and also next door at 'The Mires'.[5]  

Netherseal windmill.  Photograph taken around the turn of the nineteenth century.  Image copied from a family postcard collection, original source unknown.

The windmill on Hunts Lane was the picturesque landscape subject for artists and photographers, including an etching by J. Dunne held at the V&A.

Etching by J. Dunne, copied from a postcard from the V&A Museum.  It depicts a view of Netherseal windmill from across the mere.

The mill pool and the Hooborough Brook are mentioned in a letter from the Staffordshire antiquarian (and rector of Hartshorne after his father died in 1799), Stebbing Shaw (1762-1802), to his friend and fellow antiquarian, John Nichols, in 1792: 

Having this morning walked from Seile about a mile to Donisthorpe, a hamlet partly belonging to that parish, to see a salt spring there, I will give you some account of it while fresh in my mind.  ‘Tis in a small meadow by the side of a stream called Hooborough Brook, which issues out of Barrett Pool, a large mill-pond upon Ashby Woulds and is for a considerable distance between Donisthorpe and Seile a boundary betwixt the two counties.”[6]  

Part of Donisthorpe was then in Derbyshire, and the Seales were in Leicestershire.  Shaw does not mention either wind or water mill directly, but as he is referring to Barratt Pool as a mill pool it may be that the water mill at least was still functioning as a mill at this point in time, it being only seven years after the 1785 survey by John Smith.

 

An 1821 map held in the British Library and available to view online shows the map and names Barratt Mill.  The north-western and of the pool has been bisected by a new road from Overseal to Moira past Gorsey Leys, which effectively made the old Ashby Road past the mill into a byway.  The new road connected the Burton-Market Bosworth/Atherstone turnpike with the new spa at Moira Baths.  The map does not show a windmill but there are a couple of unfortunate creases at that point and it is unknown whether a windmill was still in operation on site at that date.  It is possible to discern the trace of a track that led across the dam, through Bath Yard and on towards Boothorpe and it may be this track that is referred to in The Story of Bath Yard: 

There is evidence on more recent maps of an old track coming from the Blackfordby and Boothorpe area and going to Barratt Mill.  Alf Jones can remember a man riding his horse down this track once a year in order to keep the right of way open […] The canal arrived in 1798 and bisected the path.  In order to keep this track open (it was obviously well used) a swing bridge was built across the canal at this point.[7]  

As Boothorpe belonged in the same parish, presumably the inhabitants were required to have their corn ground into flour at the local mill.

Overseal and Barratt Mill in 1821.  The village of Moira is new.  Note the lane leading from Barratt Mill to Boothorpe through the Moira Baths and ‘coal pit” (Marquis shaft), bisected by both the canal and the new enclosure road from Measham, through Moira to Swadlincote

 

Ordnance Survey published their first map of the area in 1835, with Barratt Pool named rather than the mill.  A number of buildings are indicated on the site with two to the east of the mill.  A house stood on one of those positions well into the twentieth century, so probably dates to this period.  The other building could perhaps be the site of the former windmill but whether it was extant at this time or another building stood at that position is not known, although the existence of the windmill seems unlikely by this date, it would surely have been obsolete by then.

 

The tithe map of Overseal and Netherseal dated to 1843 shows the mill and part of the pool, as far east as the Hooborough Brook.  A new, larger building has appeared south of the mill itself and may be related to the Moira Mining Company.  There is no obvious sign of a windmill on the tithe map, although it would not have been included as the map designates that area as Ashby Woulds and is not reproduced for the tithe map.  It seems probable that the windmill was completely gone by this time and replaced by the ‘new’ post-mill at Netherseal.  Whether the decrepitude of the medieval post-mill at both Netherseal and Overseal by the later eighteenth century led to the creation of a larger and more modern one at Netherseal in the early 1840s is a matter on which we might speculate, alongside the fact that Netherseal watermill was in operation at that time.  The Stevenson and Poultney families are connected to the Netherseal mills during the nineteenth century but whether they ground the grain into flour for the wider parish requires further investigation.

 

The milling of grain into flour to make bread was extremely important throughout history, and remains so today.  The discovery of at least three former ‘lost’ windmills alongside the known but now destroyed windmill at Netherseal demonstrates the economic importance of local mills and milling.  Their loss tells us something of the change from local production to provision of bread from more centralised manufacturers and changes to food distribution. 

 

The concluding story of Barratt Mill on the Hooborough Brook and the history of the water mill(s) at Netherseal on the River Mease will form a later story, part three of this history of the Seale mills.

 

 

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[1] DRO reference D809/A/PI/532

[2] LRO reference number: DG30/MA/249/2

[3] The information was given to me by Jim Marbrow, formerly of Grangewood, who was told the story by Herbert Curzon many years ago.  There has been no windmill on the site in living memory, nor, indeed of the lives of the previous generation.

[4] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR7132 Accessed January 24th 2021

[5] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR7132

[6] Nichols, J. The History and Antiquaries of Leicestershire. London 1795-1815 p: 998.  Further discussion of the rest of this remarkable letter in the chapter on local customs.

[7] The Ashby Woulds & District Local History Group.  The Story of Bath Yard. Moira Replan, Moira 1998 p:5