Redbournbury Mill: A Historic Flour Mill in Hertfordshire
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- British
- Site type
- Economic
- Remains
- Production Complex
On this page12 sections
History
Redbournbury Mill is a historic flour mill in the United Kingdom, on the River Ver near St Albans, with a present building dating from around 1780. Its foundation date is unknown, although a mill on the same site was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, the major survey of landholding and taxable resources compiled for William I. The present structure may stand on earlier foundations.
Medieval origins and St Albans Abbey
Around 1030, the Manor of Redbourn was given to the Abbot of St Albans by Aegelwyne le Swarte and his wife Wynfreda, wealthy Saxon landowners who may have held the manor. A mill located approximately where Redbournbury Mill stands was probably within the manor and therefore passed to the abbey. The nearby farmhouse served the abbot’s chamberlain, an official responsible for managing an important household or institution, and the mill became known as Chamberlain’s Mill.
During the abbacy of John de Berkhamstede, around 1290, Chamberlain’s Mill burnt down. The fire threatened the whole Manor of Redbourn, but the surrounding woodland contained it.
From monastic property to private estate
Records become more numerous from the mid-Tudor period. During the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII suppressed English monasteries and transferred their lands and possessions to the Crown. The mill and the other St Albans Abbey lands were seized, then later bequeathed by Henry VIII to his daughter Elizabeth I. After Elizabeth’s death, they passed to her successor, James I.
James I leased the mill through the Treasury to a succession of private tenants. It was then called Redbourne Greate Mill. In 1652, Sir Harbottle Grimston, a lawyer and politician, purchased it for £200, and the mill became part of the Gorhambury Estate. Improvements followed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the present mill building was erected around 1780.
The Hawkins family and the decline of water power
Edward Hawkins was the tenant in 1841, beginning a connection that kept the tenancy with the Hawkins family for the next 144 years, apart from a 35-year interruption beginning in 1855. Edward Hawkins’s great-granddaughter Ivy was the last member of the family to mill at Redbournbury. She began work there in 1916, aged 19, and lived at the mill until 1985.
After her father Henry died in 1932, the mill passed to his wife Julia and Ivy. Much of the Gorhambury Estate was sold by the 4th Earl of Verulam in 1936 and reverted to the Crown Estate, property held by the monarch in right of the Crown and administered separately from private possessions. Julia and Ivy retained the tenancy.
By the early twentieth century, the River Ver no longer supplied enough power for milling, and an engine had been installed, probably powered by steam or gas. It was scrapped in 1915 during the First World War. The waterwheel could still turn, however, and Ivy used it to drive a circular saw until the 1970s. In 1956, she was trapped in the waterwheel for more than an hour while making repairs. She was caught between an inner spoke and the outer wheel while the wheel carried the weight of the water, but was rescued and returned home after a short hospital stay. In 1959, The Times described her as “Britain’s only lady miller.”
Fire, restoration, and continued production
After Ivy Hawkins left in 1985, the Crown Estate put the mill up for sale. The James family bought it in 1987 with the intention of restoring it to full working order. Milling had ceased in the 1950s. English Heritage offered a substantial restoration grant, and the mill and house were reclassified as Grade II* listed buildings. This is the second-highest level of legal protection for buildings of particular architectural or historic interest in England.
On 22 August 1987, soon after restoration began, a roof fire gutted most of the mill’s interior and the upper floor of the house. The gearing survived, making a full restoration possible. Work continued for ten years and included repairing and installing a Crossley diesel engine that had been unused for about 30 years. The reduced flow of the modern River Ver means that the waterwheel cannot now provide sufficient power, so the mill relies on diesel power.
In 2005, a disused barn at the front of the mill was converted into a bakery, which opened in July 2006. It produces bread and cakes using flour ground at Redbournbury Mill. The mill is a Grade II* listed building, with the listing also covering the front railings, and was designated on 27 September 1984.
Remains
Redbournbury Mill is a surviving flour-milling complex beside the River Ver. The mill building standing today dates from around 1780 and retains machinery associated with its earlier operation as a watermill, together with a diesel engine used to provide power in the modern period. The lane beside the mill crosses the river by a deep ford.
Mill machinery and power systems
Millstones and gearing
Inside the mill, three millstones are set in a single straight line. Millstones are heavy stones used to grind grain into flour, while gearing transfers power to turn them. This in-line arrangement is described as the only known example in Hertfordshire and as rare in the United Kingdom, where millstones are typically placed around a central gearing mechanism. The mill’s gearing survived the 1987 fire, although most of the interior was destroyed.
Crossley diesel engine
A Crossley diesel engine was repaired and installed during the ten-year restoration. Before reaching Redbournbury Mill, it had operated at a water-pumping station in Aldershot and was later kept in an enthusiast’s garden. It now supplies the mechanical power that the reduced flow of the River Ver can no longer provide through the waterwheel.
Associated buildings
Farmhouse
The nearby farmhouse is associated with the mill and was historically used by the abbot’s chamberlain. It was among the buildings protected alongside the mill, and its upper floor was gutted in the 1987 roof fire.
Bakery barn
A disused barn at the front of the mill was converted into a bakery in 2005. The bakery uses flour produced by the mill for its bread and cakes, linking the surviving agricultural building with the site’s continuing milling use.
