Description

KELVEDON SWAN STREET TL 8619-8719

8/271 Easterford Mill 21.12.67

GV II*

Water mill. C18, altered in cL9. Timber framed, weatherboarded, roofed with handmade red plain tiles. Main range facing NW, abutting on Easterford Mill House (item 8/272, q.v.) at the right. Small single-storey lean-to extension to left. 3 catslide extensions of various dates and types to rear, the whole forming a rectangular plan. 2 storeys and loft. Ground floor, one early C19 sash of 16 lights, one C20 casement. First floor, 3 early cL9 sashes of 16 lights with crown and bullseye glass. One C20 door and one plain boarded door. External stair to another plain boarded door on first floor. Right end of roof semi-conical where it overlays the roof of Easterford Mill House. Lucam under repair at time of survey, October 1986. Gabled enclosure for hoist projecting above ridge behind lucam. One gabled dormer to rear, over catslide roof, lighting loft. 'Easterford, or Rogers', as it was often called after its last miller, is an outstanding survivor full of charm and interest. A typical three-pair country mill, it stands just as it gave up work in the 1930s without ever, so far as is known, employing auxiliary power. Damsels and shoes still stand on two of the stones with a simple system of adjusting the damsel's beat by leading the crook string over one of four notches cut in the horse frame. The wheel is all iron with flat paddles set on pegged wooden starts, and the wheel shaft is extended to carry a belt pulley on the side of the wheel opposite to the pit wheel. It seems surprising that so convenient an arrangement is not found elsewhere, but what use Kelvedon made of it is not now clear. Stone nuts, pit wheel and wallower are iron, but the spur is a fine old wooden compass wheel and the vertical shaft is also wooden. The stone nuts were raised by a simple screw and spanner device. The bridge trees consist in each case of two heavy timbers at right angles, with the member carrying the stone spindle set across the member raised by the tentering screw. The ends of both are tenons sliding in mortices, with the fixed ends held by iron pins which can be adjusted by a choice of holes. An advantage of what at first sight seems an awkwardly complicated arrangement is that the pinion jacks are rendered very accessible. On the stone floor the wooden sack hoist pinion is geared unbevelled into the compass arm crown wheel and the sack hoist pulley itself is exceptionally large, about four feet six inches in diameter. The building itself is curious, with the weight of the stage floor taken on an inside timber frame and the front wall of the mill itself supporting only the roof. It appears that originally the mill was a mansard structure of mid-18th century date but the thrust of the roof was so great that the feet of the upright posts kicked inwards. Big rough-hewn knees were fixed with large Colt screws in the angles between the tie beams and the vertical posts. Later the north wall was raised and a single span roof erected over it so that the eaves are now higher at the front than the back and the stage floor is lit by windows in the wall instead of the usual rooflights and gables.' (H. Benham, Some Essex Water Mills, 1976, 65-7). The inner timber frame is of hardwood, some of it re-used. Since the above report was written the corroded flat paddles have been replaced in steel. All the machinery remains in place. A new steel sluice gate is operated by the original cast iron gearing. The building is shown distantly in a photograph of c.1865 reproduced in B.L. Kentish, Kelvedon and its Antiquities, 1974, plate 7.

Listing NGR: TL8669419069

External Links

• Wikidata Q17557665

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Recommended Books

• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas