All grist to the mill for enthusiasts
FOR YEARS Hazel and Raymond Harrison have kept the wheels turning at what is one of Yorkshire’s last working water mills.
Low Mill stands in an idyllic location near Chop Gate, North Yorkshire, fed by a channel from the River Seph, which Mr Harrison believes was dug by the monks of Rievaulx Abbey 800 years ago.
A new local history book celebrates the centuries-old mill, which has been painstakingly restored twice in the last 60 years.
As well as explaining the complexities of how the mill works, the book tells its history from the earliest days through to the early 20th century when it became uneconomic to run as farmers could buy in corn more cheaply than grow it locally.
When Mrs Harrison married her first husband, the late Ted Garbutt, and moved to Low Mill in 1960 the mill had been disused for many years and the water wheel was in pieces.
It was repaired in the 1970s, with sixth form students from Middlebrough coming to lend a hand. By 1980 it was working again and used to grind corn and beans with an external drive to saw wood.
But an accident while Mr Garbutt was sawing wood led to the wedges holding the wheel in place to break loose and float off down the river, with the main axle breaking.
Mr Harrison got involved with the mill after retiring in 1995 and starting to help out with the extensive gardens.
Work repairing the mill began in 2002, four years after Mr Garbutt’s death, a massive job as it involved installing a new main axle made from a huge chunk of oak with lignum vitae bearings.
Mr Harrison got fascinated by mills after visiting one at Easington in County Durham as a boy, which has since been converted into a house: “When I came here it was derelict and I couldn’t find anyone who knew anything about it.
“All the people who knew anything were in the graveyard. Hazel wanted to see it running again as Hazel and her husband had spent a lot of time and effort to get it going.
“It took me three years to find a piece of oak big enough for the shaft – it weighs a metric tonne.”
The mill, which was extended in 1785, has two stones – French burrs for wholemeal flour and Derbyshire grit for barley – but hasn’t ground corn for years. Mr Harrison thinks it is unlikely it will in the future. He said: “If we were to grind flour, the powers that be wouldn’t let us sell it – we couldn’t get it clean enough. “Next August I’ll be 90 and Hazel is 90 before that. How much longer we can keep going I don’t know. But we will keep doing bits as we can.”
Mrs Harrison, who years ago used the mill to grind barley for feed for the animals and make her own bread from the flour, said: “I’m hoping everything will keep going.
“There aren’t many people who know much about them – we were years before we found somebody. So few people have the knowledge.”
Low Mill in Bilsdale: The life of an 800-year-old water mill by Malcolm Bowes and Jane and Reed Gamble of the Bilsdale Local History Group is priced £6. Visit bilsdale.org.uk and use the contacts section.
It took me three years to find a piece of oak big enough for the shaft. Raymond Harrison, who resorted Low Mill with his wife Hazel.