HISTORY OF OUR WATERMILL

The recorded history of the mills to be found at Town Mills is quite well documented and to be found from before the Norman Conquest of AD1066.

Early History of the Mill site.

In William 1's (William the Conqueror) Domesday Book (The Great Survey) written from AD1085 - 1086, a mill was recorded as part of 'Milvertone' [Milverton - mill by the ford]. Previously it was a marriage gift to the new Anglo-Saxon Queen, Eadgyth 3 Eadgyth, Queen Edith (Eddid). She was the daughter of Godwin the Earl of Wessex and married King Edward the Confessor in AD1045. This Royal land at Milvertone was part of her extensive estates around the country and contained a mill in the Manor of Milvertone paying 7 shillings and 6 pence annually to the Queen with 6 acres of meadow, 100 acres of pasture and 100 acres of underwood (Coppice). The whole Manor generated £25 pounds p/a. This was an important Royal estate.  

We have on site next to the Hillfarrance Brook, a flax tank, which has a waterwheel building attributed to being a 16th Century Linen Flax & later a woollen fulling mill which would have had an undershot wheel directly into the Hillfarrance Brook. Until the eighteenth century, linen was one of the most important textiles in the world. In this part of the world the woollen industry was prevalent later from the 17th Century. Fields for growing Linen Flax (Linum usitatissimum) in the Anglo-Saxon period have been recorded locally. 

[Not to be confused with a different variety of flax grown for its seed to make linseed oil.] 

Linen flax was soaked in water in a flax tank for 14 or so days to soften the woody stems and inner pith (called pectin) This process was called retting. The stems needed to start to rot or ferment to allow the fibres to be released. These when rotted were then gently passed between wooden hammers powered by the waterwheel of the mill to break open the stems. Water from the river was used during this crushing process to flush away the pectin in the pith. Only the long fibres can be used to make linen. Long fibres are found just behind the bark in the multi-layer stem of the flax plant. After retting, the stems were allowed to dry and then crushed by passing through the wooden hammers again to tease out the long fibres from the stem, a time consuming job mainly finished by hand at this time. These fibres were able to be spun into a yarn to make Linen. Linen could then be woven into bedsheets, towelling, and decorative tablecloths etc.

Pre the C16th many mills were also converted to work Flax (Linen) and later with woollen cloth, processing the cloth by raising the weft, to help finish Serge ( a durable twilled woollen or worsted fabric ). The early flax mill required one wooden hammer set to break the woody flax stems, whereas a fulling mill used two set processes (one to clean the wool cloth of greasy dirt and a second set to raise the weft), At this time England began expanding its own weaving industry when in AD1558 the Calais Royal monopoly was broken by the loss of Calais to the French. The area around Taunton in Somerset  and Exeter in Devon were important Serge production areas until the mechanised large mills of the English northern counties took away the work due to economies of scale. The technology for making Serge had allegedly been brought into the country by French Monks. 

Locally here in Milverton woollen products were part of a larger wool processing and trading period leading to the construction of some fine house frontages and villas during the Georgian period.