History

Thousand Year Time Line

The Four Stotfold Watermills

The Saving of Stotfold Mill

A watermill has stood at this point on the River Ivel for about a thousand years, one of four Stotfold mills listed in the 1086 Domesday Book, and is notable for being the last working watermill in the Bedfordshire town of Stotfold. Bert Hyde, a local historian, has researched the Mills of Stotfold and found that, by 1707, two had long disappeared while the other two remained working. Maps from 1765 confirm two mill sites, later known as Taylors Mill and Randalls Mill. Rather confusingly, both of these watermills were referred to as ‘Stotfold Mill’ at different times in their history. On the 1765 map, Taylors Mill is not named whilst Randalls Mill is called the Upper Mill. There are later references to this mill as being the ‘Old Mill’ while, in 1869, the Post Office directory gives the name as Stotfold Mill. Delivery notes issued in 1876 by John Randall, the Mill owner at that time, were also headed "Stotfold Mill".

The Randalls were an old-established Stotfold family and, as a young man, John Randall had been sent to be trained as a miller at Jordans Mill, near Biggleswade. He eventually took over Randalls Mill in 1876, first renting it from Charles Vaughan and then buying it following Mr Vaughan’s death. He made improvements to the Mill, including the installation of a steam engine to provide additional power for the waterwheel, and the 65ft tall chimney was built at the back of the Mill. The Suffolk millwrights Whitmore & Binyon rebuilt the millwork in the late 1890s, fitting new stones and a new waterwheel. The new overshot wheel, fitted with bucket paddles, is 8ft in diameter and, at 14ft wide, the widest corn-mill wheel in the UK. Designed by John Lampit of Hemel Hempstead, it was installed in 1897 to replace the previous undershot wheel.

John Randall also planned to build a new roller mill alongside the existing mill but unfortunately, he died in 1900 with the project unfinished. His son Ebenezer carried on with the work and Redhouse, a prominent local building firm, built the new four-storey brick building. The building, completed in 1902, was not a great commercial success. Based largely on old technology and with fierce competition from much larger mills in the area, the roller mill quickly fell into disuse. The old mill, however, remained in operation for many years, milling flour and then grinding grain for animal feed. A diesel engine replaced steam power in 1954 but, by then, its working days were numbered. Sadly, dwindling economic prospects led to Stotfold’s last working watermill ceasing milling operation in 1966. The buildings were used only for storage and the last miller, Sam Randall, finally sold the Mill in 1984.

Devastation and Dereliction

Ron Roper, a Bedfordshire man with a passion for Mills, tried to purchase the Mill, to save it as a working museum. Just before the completion of contracts in December 1992, the building was gutted by fire. Although the structure was seriously damaged, most of the main milling machinery was considered repairable, justifying a 1987 County Court judgment that "the Mill and its machinery are of national importance....". This prevented the remains of the building being demolished and the site being used for housing development.

Following the disaster Ron and Robin Tasker, who lived in the nearby Mill House, began the fight to save the damaged Mill and the machinery. This subsequently led to the formation of the Stotfold Mill Preservation Trust (a registered charity) being set up with the purpose of buying the ruin and restoring it to a fully operational Mill.

The first Trustees were Robin & Lorelie Tasker, John Saunders, Jayne Hyde and Brian Collier. Efforts to secure ownership of the Mill then began. For the next five years, activity was very much ‘behind the scenes’, with very little physical work at the Mill site. In 1998, Ron and Robin gave a presentation at the Annual Stotfold Town Meeting, outlining the plans for the Mill and asking for volunteers to work on the project. The meeting resulted in new people coming on board who would play major roles in the project over the years to come. These included the Huckles, the Radfords and the Mastertons, local builder John Hyde and Sam Randall, the Mill’s last Miller.

Clearing and Securing the Site

On a wet Saturday afternoon in 1998, a group of volunteers walked through the gate, forced their way through the tangle of bushes that had taken root in the Mill, climbed over piles of ash and rubble and reached the remains of the broken and rusting machinery. "Right then - where do we start?"

Shortly after the fire some attempts had been made to protect the site from the weather and vandals. Temporary repairs were made to the front wall and some areas were covered with tarpaulins. The first task was clearance of the site. Volunteers began the task of removing vegetation, and some 60 tonnes of ash and rubble were dug out by hand from the ground floor. All the material was sieved to ensure that any item of historical importance was salvaged. Here the knowledge of Sam Randall and Ron Roper was crucial. Week after week odd-shaped tools and pieces of machinery would be retrieved from the debris and presented to Sam and Ron for identification. As well as the machinery, a large number of the original locally made bricks were also salvaged to be reused later during the rebuilding.

Phillip Radford, a member of the Trust, recalls those days "When you walk around this stunning building today it is difficult to imagine that it once took a considerable amount of time and effort to climb through the wreckage and over the debris to get from one end to the other. I well remember the excitement when we had finally cleared a path a foot wide right down to the far wall to make it easier to get wheelbarrows in to clear the vegetation and debris that covered the waterwheel."

With much debris still to be cleared work was carried out on the remaining walls, which were capped to protect them from further weather damage, and a temporary roof of timber and plastic sheet was also erected. It was in this condition that the Mill hosted its first open day. To the amazement of the team several hundred people turned up to view what at that time was essentially a burnt-out ground floor with a plastic roof which housed some rusty machinery with some very charred wooden bits"

During the initial clearance work the Trust finally secured ownership of the Mill, and bids were submitted to various bodies for funding to cover the costs of what was a major restoration project. A start-up grant was received from the Mid Beds District Council, and this enabled the Trust to obtain funding from EB Bedfordshire Ltd. An initial bid for Lottery funding failed, but further considerable funding was obtained from EB Bedfordshire (latterly ShanksFirst then GrantScape) and a second Heritage Lottery bid was successful.

Grants and major donations came from Motorola, Vauxhall, local benefactors, and a legacy from Sam Randall’s sister-in law, Malvene. Other fund-raising activities have included open days, quiz nights, old time music-halls, jumble sales and car boot sales.

Rebuilding and Restoration

The restoration team’s structure has progressively changed to meet the requirements of each stage of the work, incorporating qualified engineers, specialist contractors and a host of volunteers, all of them gratefully welcoming the ever-present advice of Sam Randall. The work fell into two main categories: rebuilding the Mill under John Hyde’s direction, and the machinery under Ron Roper and Phillip Radford.

With the first of the major grants secured, the rebuilding of the Mill’s shell began in 2001, with John Hyde Builders as main contractor. The decision was taken to use British materials wherever possible, and the massive timbers required for the framing came from the Blair Athol Estate in Scotland. The shell was completed in March 2002 and a traditional topping-out ceremony was held. In the May, during National Mills Weekend, the building was opened by Sam Randall and Bedfordshire County Council Chairman, John Saunders, and blessed by the Vicar of St Mary’s Church, Stotfold.

While work on the fabric of the building progressed, volunteers tackled the machinery. The build-up of lime-scale, some two inches thick in places, meant that the wheel could not be turned, and the buckets had suffered fire damage. The buckets were cut back and volunteers, mainly the lady members of the team, spent nearly ten months undertaking the tedious task of chipping off the lime-scale using hammers and chisels; it is estimated that some one-and-a-half tonnes of lime scale were removed. Volunteers wire-brushed the hursting support columns and structural steelwork to remove years of accumulated grime and rust.

Work by professional Millwright Neil Medcalf, funded by the Heritage Lottery grant: included replacing the waterwheel’s sole plate, fitting new buckets and making and installing a new upright shaft. Local volunteer Ray Kilby built an entirely new Great Spur Wheel, a truly stunning piece of craftsmanship, to replace the one destroyed by the fire. The rim and spacers were constructed from oak with hornbeam being used for the teeth. The wheel eventually ran under water power in May 2003.

During 2003 and 2004 restoration work on the engine house and the chimney was completed. Work was also progressing on the restoration of the waterwheel and the milling machinery.

The fire had damaged all four sets of millstones. Fortunately, set number two, a pair of French Burr stones, were able to be salvaged and restored. Burr stones are made up of segments of stone held together with steel bands and backed with plaster of Paris. All of the steel banding was corroded beyond further safe use and the heat of the fire had destroyed the plaster backing. The plaster had come away from the stone and was no longer helping to hold them together. New steel bands were fitted to the bed and runner stones and re-backed using 200 kilos of plaster of Paris.

The upright shaft was thought to be reusable, but further examination revealed that it had decayed to the point that any pressure on it would have probably twisted the shaft in two. A new one was required but no suitable timber could be found in the UK. With the approval of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, a laminated shaft of Siberian larch was made in Denmark using a construction technique which has been successfully used on Dutch windmills for over 50 years. The shaft is both strong and stable. As the shell of the building was complete, the old shaft was easily cut into sections and removed. Getting the new one in was more of a problem, and holes had to be cut in all of the floors and a section removed from the roof. Using a large crane, the new shaft was lifted and lowered through the roof and into place and located in the bottom bearing. The whole job only took half an hour but cutting all the holes in the floors and roof had taken much, much longer!

The bottom half of the pit wheel revolves in a tank in a pit below ground and water level, and this tank had been in place since 1897. The passage of time and the fire had meant that the tank was badly corroded and the pit wheel revolved in water. This would mean that the oak pit wheel teeth would only last about 5 years and replacing them every few years would be an expensive and time-consuming business. The decision was taken to replace the old tank, and local boiler makers Michael Maskells were commissioned to build a new one. Phillip remembers the problems involved "To get the old tank out of its position the pit wheel had first to be split into its two halves. With the hursting in place, the pit wheel could not be lifted out so it was split into its two halves, the top half was moved into the hursting leaving room for the bottom half to be rotated around the horizontal water wheel shaft and stored alongside the top half. Each half weighs half a ton. Now the pit tank could be lifted and rotated out from under the water wheel shaft and up through the hole in the hursting normally occupied by the upright shaft. This operation alone took two days to complete. A reversal of the entire operation was required to get the new tank into place"

Recognition

In 2001 and 2003 the Trust won the Environmental section of Vauxhall’s Griffin Award, presented annually to "organisations which make an outstanding contribution to the community through the development of a new or enhanced service or project within the following categories - Community Development, Environment or Safety and Security".

In 2004, the Trust was a National Gold Award Winner in the Environmental class of The Green Apple Civic Pride Awards, which celebrate "outstanding environmental performance by recognising and publicising companies, corporations and individuals who are making an effort to preserve and protect the environment for generations to come".

A Day to Remember!

With the waterwheel restored, new pit tank in place, upright shaft replaced, new spur wheel installed, mill stones rebuilt, crown wheel repaired and all metal work cleaned and painted, Stotfold Mill was ‘ready for action’ On Wednesday 12 April 2006 the Mill produced flour for the first time since 1966, a huge moment for all those involved.

What’s Next?

The Mill is now in working order, and meets all modern standards for public access, health and safety and environmental health. Randall’s Tea Room within the Mill opened it’s doors for the first time on the 23^rd April 2006 and the working Mill opened to the public in May 2006, with the formal opening in October 2006.

However, there is still much to do as funds allow. The Mill had four sets of stones, but only one set of stones and running gears is operational; the aim at this stage is to obtain a second set and make them operational too. The dressing floor and sack hoist will be restored and a boardwalk built around the outside of the building to allow access to view the sluice and river. Grant funding is being sought for these areas and we await the outcome of the application.

A further urgently required task is replacement of the weir upstream from the Mill to maintain the water level and prevent flooding.

Future Development of the Mill & Mill Meadows

As the Mill reaches completion of the restoration, the Trust recognised the need to bring in new people to contribute alongside the existing team which led the restoration. The Trust is moving into the next phase of becoming an ongoing business to ensure the Mil’s longevity. Paul Redwood, the Trust Secretary, says, "We have appointed a Board of people from a wide breadth and depth of backgrounds, providing skills and capabilities from public and private industry, government, education & information technology. The challenge for the team is to develop the Mill as a self-financing business with maximum access for the public. With the Trustees and volunteers we have, this is an achievable challenge".

The Trust needs to generate an annual income of around £13,000 to ensure that the Mill can be open to the public and fully maintained. The major fundraising event, held in May, is the Annual Stotfold Mill Steam Fair and Country Show. Christine Smith leads the team that runs the event. As Christine says, "This is a massive task for the team of volunteers. Without every individual’s contribution we could not do it. This is the major fundraiser for the Mill and the biggest community event in Stotfold. Visitor numbers have grown each year, with over 7,000 enjoying the event in 2006".

Mill Meadows - The Mill is further enhanced by the adjacent eight-acre Mill Meadows, leased from the County Council. Teasel, the local conservation group, is developing a varied riverside wildlife habit here on the Trust’s behalf. The group has planted many indigenous trees and hedges, created an osier bed, built an otter holt and excavated lakes and ponds, all with the aim of eventually making the Meadows accessible to the public as an enticing place to delight Mill visitors in the new millennium.

From 1992 Vision to 2006 Restoration

Robin Tasker had the vision from the beginning to buy and restore this magnificent building to its former glory, and see it once more proudly standing astride the River Ivel. Robin is now the Honorary Life President of the Trust and is delighted to see his dream and vision turned into reality.

Value

The Mill has recently been valued at £750,000. To date, £350,000 has been spent on materials and resources, so the volunteers have added £400,000 to the value, an enormous achievement

As John Hyde, Vice-Chairman of the Trust commented. "The members of the Trust, volunteers and all those involved with the restoration of Stotfold Mill can be rightly proud of their achievements. It has been a privilege to be part of this team and to see the building and machinery rise from the ashes."