Restoring the mill

When Jim bought Pitt Mill back in 1986, the building was a shell. The stone walls were sound and just needed some rendering, but the main problem was the roof. “It was in a shocking condition and had to be re-slated and re-covered,” he says. There were a few beams in place, but Jim had to add the first and second floors, and the wooden stairs. The floor in the vat room was just dirt, so had to be concreted. The windows also needed to be re-glazed. Jim received a small grant from the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas, now part of the Rural Development Commission. Although there was a considerable amount of work involved in the two-year project, Jim says the main challenge was the cold. “We had no heating here, and I remember putting the windows in during a snow storm with the snow blowing past me into the room.” The mill is now much warmer, thanks to a new Rayburn stove in the vat room. The original water wheel had been removed between the wars, so Jim sourced another one from a farm in Wales, installing it in 2000. He used the wheel to run the rag pulper for several years, but stopped when he became involved in setting up a papermaking museum in Hemel Hempstead and no longer had time to maintain it. Now he is back at work full time, he plans to clear the watercourse once more and get the wheel going again.