Stogumber's Mills: 1,000 years of Water Power

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Water Power & Agriculture c1800 to c1900

Although it might not look like it this is a picture of a water mill which is at New Barn, Higher Vexford. This is typical of a number of mills that were built during the 19th Century just as others were shutting. The reason for this is that this was a period when farming had its own industrial revolution – or maybe mechanical revolution – when many jobs which had previously been done by man or by beast were mechanised. Steam power, horse power and water power were used in new ways both in the field and at the farmstead. Water power was utilised to drive threshing machines, to pulp roots, to cut chaff and to grind animal feed. These mills clearly had to be at the farm. The water wheel is to the right of the building but cannot be seen in this photograph

Inside the 19th century machinery is untouched. The drive wheel is on the left of the photograph, situated immediately behind the water wheel which is on the other side of the wall. Two mill stones are set set just below first floor level to the right of the light bulb, and adjacent to a chute through which ground animal feed would have been directed into sacks

The wheel itself is not in such a good state having lain dormant and outside for several decades. It is an impressively proportioned piece of equipment being approximately 14 foot in diameter and is made of cast iron. It would have been able to drive the millstones at a speed of around 150 rpm producing in excess of 3cwt of feed per hour

Escott Farm has a similar watermill, although the wheel was detached from the machine room to which it was connected by a drive shaft

The wheel is now obscured by ivy but measures diameter 14ft 6 inch and width 3ft 1inch, with a gearing ratio 1:10. The water was supplied to the top of the wheel along a metal conduit which runs just below the rear eaves of the open building. This was itself fed from a series of ponds which are still in evidence in the fields above Escott.

The late Mr Sellick could remember the water wheel in use when he was a boy at the farm, but his was the last generation that would have been able to remember such watermills. In the early decades of the last century they were superseded the internal combustion engine and then electrically driven machines

Water power enjoyed a brief renaissance at the end of the 20th Century at Combe Sydenham. The mill there was restored in the 1980s and ran as a tourist attraction and working mill, grinding corn for use in a quality bread which was sold on a commercial basis.

Inside the machinery is in an excellent state, and is all ready to go, but alas for a variety of reasons this mill ceased production and now, just like its forbear in the Domesday survey, is sine censu, without value, producing no income for its owner. Combe Sydenham mill is no longer open to the public.

The use of water power has been central to the life of the parish for a thousand years or so. Who knows, perhaps as interest in alternative energy grows its use may once again be revived ?

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