3 THE OLD MILL, THORPE

Demolished to make way for the M3 motorway

When I knew it, the Old Mill at Thorpe in Surrey was a restaurant, but there was no doubt as to its origin as a watermill. Part red brick, part tile-hung and part black shiplapped timber, it was built using those small bricks which, my mother had taught me, were Tudor in origin. None of that prevented its demolition in the early 1970s as it lay directly in the path of the M3 motorway. I was working in nearby Chertsey at the time. The threat of demolition caught my attention. I took a couple of photographs and built my model. Many years later I refurbished it, replacing faded building papers with Redutex embossed sheets from DCC Supplies. I renamed it the Moonacre Valley Inn (another movie link) and it remains on my layout to this day.