Ifield Water Mill: A Restored Flour Mill in Crawley, United Kingdom
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Economic
- Remains
- Watermill
On this page9 sections
History
Ifield Water Mill is a restored nineteenth-century flour mill in Crawley, United Kingdom, rebuilt in 1817 in the vernacular tradition after earlier industrial use on the site. It developed from an iron forge powered by a mill pond on Ifield Brook and became the largest corn mill in the surrounding area by the late eighteenth century.
From iron forge to corn mill
An iron forge had been established at Ifield by the late sixteenth century. Its power came from a mill pond created by damming Ifield Brook, a tributary of the River Mole. By 1606, the site included a house, barn, mill, pond, and two small plots known as Ifield Mill and Ifield Mill Pond.
The Middleton family, a prosperous local family involved in ironworking across Sussex, leased the forge and its associated buildings. They also leased the nearby Bewbush furnace, an industrial ironmaking works where iron was smelted using fuel such as charcoal. Bewbush furnace closed in 1642 after deforestation had exhausted its supply of fuel. In 1643, during the English Civil War, Parliamentarian forces overran the area and destroyed the remaining ironworking infrastructure.
The cleared forge site was later converted into a corn mill. The precise date of this change is uncertain because the word “mill” was used for both forges and flour mills, but the corn mill was operating by 1660. At that time it was run by William Garton, a local Quaker, meaning a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
Ownership and rebuilding
The mill was rebuilt in 1683, when the Middleton family owned it outright. Leonard Gale acquired it in 1715, and after the mill left Gale’s family in 1759, several partnerships owned it for roughly fifty years.
By the late eighteenth century, Ifield was the largest corn mill in the area. A survey made when Napoleon threatened an invasion recorded a capacity of 16 sacks of flour and 120 loaves of bread per day. Other local mills produced no more than four sacks daily.
Abraham Goldsmid bought the mill in 1809, after which it fell out of use. It stood unused for eight years until Thomas Durrant, a miller from nearby Merstham, purchased it in 1817. Durrant was the first owner to work at the mill as its miller, and he completely rebuilt the building. The 1683 structure was demolished and replaced by the present mill. Durrant financed the work with money won through litigation against miners whose activities had damaged the water supply to his mill at Merstham.
Decline and disuse
The water supply began to weaken soon after the 1817 rebuilding. In 1848, the railway between Crawley and Horsham divided the mill pond. A wooden bridge initially crossed the pond, but it was later replaced by an embankment. Competition also increased after a windmill was built near the village centre in 1837, while two other millers were recorded in Ifield parish by 1821.
The mill changed hands many times during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Harding family, a long-established line of owner-millers, faced the continuing decline in water power. A steam engine driven by a waterwheel was installed, but weak water flow meant that the engine often had to be operated manually.
Commercial milling had ended by 1927. In 1934, the mill and adjacent Mill Cottage were offered for sale as a “gentleman’s residence with a picturesque disused water mill.” The building thereafter served for storage and remained nominally for sale.
Listing and restoration
English Heritage designated the mill a Grade II listed building on 21 June 1948. Grade II listing identifies a building of special architectural or historic interest. The associated mill house received a separate Grade II listing on 1 May 1974.
Crawley Borough Council acquired the mill through a compulsory purchase order in 1974 while obtaining land around Ifield for housing development. Local volunteers began restoring the building on 15 June that year. The work took eight years and was carried out mainly at weekends, with brief assistance from unemployed participants in a job-creation programme.
The restored mill is owned by Crawley Borough Council and leased to Crawley Museum Society. Before Crawley Museum was established at Goffs Park, the building housed a temporary museum and exhibition. The mill house and cottage were acquired during the same land programme and leased to private tenants; the mill house is now a public house.
In 2015, artist Denys Ovenden produced an illustration of the mill pond and its railway crossing as they appeared in 1848. The image was later used on a limited-edition Royal Mail postage stamp.
Remains
The surviving site combines the tall weatherboarded mill, its associated buildings, and the mill pond formed by damming Ifield Brook. It lies on Weald clay between sandier ground to the south and a narrow limestone outcrop farther north. The present building preserves the form of the 1817 reconstruction, while the restored machinery and water-control features express its earlier function as a water-powered corn mill.
The mill building
Ifield Water Mill is a three-storey vernacular building. Its ground floor is brick, while the two upper floors are timber-framed and have gables. The external walls are covered with weatherboarding, overlapping boards used as cladding, and the slate roof projects beyond the walls on brackets. A mill hoist projects from the north elevation. During restoration, the timber and brickwork around the hoist were found to be severely deteriorated.
The restoration renewed three staircases, internal wall boarding, and wooden floors. Windows were refitted to their original design, and much of the external weatherboarding was replaced while retaining the building’s earlier appearance. Waterproof cladding was fitted beneath the weatherboarding, and the roof was repaired inside and out. Hydraulic jacks lifted and temporarily suspended the entire building while new load-bearing timbers and supports were installed.
A 1683 date tablet bearing the initials of Thomas Middleton and his wife Mary was salvaged from the demolished earlier mill and fixed to the exterior of the present building. It connects the restored structure with the Middleton-owned mill that preceded it.
Waterwheel and water management
The waterwheel and its surrounding brick structure required several years of restoration. Parts of the original wheel were salvaged and incorporated into a rebuilt oak-and-steel structure, while the supporting walls were completely reconstructed. A sluice gate was installed across the mill pond, and a flow-control mechanism was transferred from the disused Hammonds Mill in Burgess Hill.
The wheel is an overshot type, powered by water entering near its top so that both the water’s height and its flow provide energy. It is described as the largest wheel of its kind in Sussex, weighs about 6 long tons, and measures 11 feet in diameter. Depending on the water flow, it turns at between 8 and 15 revolutions per minute.
The wooden parts of the reconstructed wheel decayed after approximately thirty years. With assistance from the Lottery Heritage Fund, they were replaced by a steel waterwheel.
Mill house, cottage, and pond
The mill house is a sixteenth-century half-timbered building, with a visible timber frame and infill between its structural members. Later brick additions altered the building, which retains an original tiled hipped roof. Much of the house was remodelled in the twentieth century in the style of the earlier structure.
Mill Cottage began as a barn built during the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It was converted to residential use in the 1930s. The mill pond remains an associated water feature, retaining the function created when Ifield Brook was dammed to supply the mill.
During reconstruction, the northern part of the pond was drained in 1976, allowing trees to establish in the exposed bed. The area south of the railway had previously been described as ecologically barren. By 1979, it had been restocked with more than 30,000 fish, and a study recorded 58 bird species in the recovering environment. The surrounding soil is considered suitable for establishing vegetation.
Ovenden’s 2015 illustration provides a visual record of the pond’s earlier railway crossing. It depicts a wooden trellis viaduct carrying the railway across the water in 1848, before the bridge gave way to an embankment.
