We are all familiar with areas or houses with names containing "melin" or "pandy". After all, there are enough of them if you look closely around. What we often fail to realise is the historic importance of these melinai or pandai.
The most fascinating thing about the talk given this evening by Arnold Hughes of the Ruthin Historical Society on the watermills of the upper Clwyd was that up to the early part of the 20th century they were so much a part of rural life. As rural life has changed, so the watermills have been discontinued and disappeared, either literally vanished or finding a new use following conversion into pretty-pretty residencies.
The mill with which we will be most familiar is the town mill on Mill Street. It This has a medieval foundation but, as often happened during prosperous times, it was extended by one floor. It was the castle's grist mill and, like virtually all of the period, was established by the English overlord, Reggie de Grey. This, we were told, was a source of revenue for the castle till the 16th century, because tenants had to take their grain to the landlord's mill.
The town mill was a relatively inefficient "backshot" mills, which meant that the water powering it came under rather than over the mill wheel. The town mill sat upon a pool of water. It housed two wheels but this had reverted to one by 1875.
The mills itself ceased in around 1900. The castle sold the town mill in 1913 and its purchaser wanted to bring the watermill back into use as a sawmill but, by then, the leet supplying the wheel had blocked up and there was no power. For a period, the owner used a generator. By the 1930s, it had become a transport business and a separate builders' merchants. Though subsequently prone to flooding, it was converted into housing in 1988.
According to Hughes. the Rhuthun/Ruthin town mill was one of 76 known mills in Denbighshire of which at least 38 were in the upper Clwyd. They were a Roman invention being more efficient than the Greek flat mills. There were three types of water mill:
Indeed, mills opened, closed and needed refurbishing throughout the middle ages and beyond. Rebuilding was common, owing to structural stress.
Why did the Vale's mills close?
The most fascinating thing about the talk given this evening by Arnold Hughes of the Ruthin Historical Society on the watermills of the upper Clwyd was that up to the early part of the 20th century they were so much a part of rural life. As rural life has changed, so the watermills have been discontinued and disappeared, either literally vanished or finding a new use following conversion into pretty-pretty residencies.
Identity crisis: Wikipedia refers to the town mill as the "old mill" and, as we known, Wikipedia cannot be wrong...
The mill with which we will be most familiar is the town mill on Mill Street. It This has a medieval foundation but, as often happened during prosperous times, it was extended by one floor. It was the castle's grist mill and, like virtually all of the period, was established by the English overlord, Reggie de Grey. This, we were told, was a source of revenue for the castle till the 16th century, because tenants had to take their grain to the landlord's mill.
The remains of the leet which served the town mill runs from the wear from a wear south of Crispin Yard parallel to the Clwyd
The town mill was a relatively inefficient "backshot" mills, which meant that the water powering it came under rather than over the mill wheel. The town mill sat upon a pool of water. It housed two wheels but this had reverted to one by 1875.
The remains of the leet passing under the redundant bridge south of Cae Ddol, to the right of the "tunnel"
The mills itself ceased in around 1900. The castle sold the town mill in 1913 and its purchaser wanted to bring the watermill back into use as a sawmill but, by then, the leet supplying the wheel had blocked up and there was no power. For a period, the owner used a generator. By the 1930s, it had become a transport business and a separate builders' merchants. Though subsequently prone to flooding, it was converted into housing in 1988.
According to Hughes. the Rhuthun/Ruthin town mill was one of 76 known mills in Denbighshire of which at least 38 were in the upper Clwyd. They were a Roman invention being more efficient than the Greek flat mills. There were three types of water mill:
- Grist mills, grinding corn or wheat into flour or oats & barley, often with three separate wheels in each.
- Fulling mills (pandai) which, later, were often converted into woollen mills. These became redundant with the advent of woollen "factories" at which point woollen cloth production was no longer a domestic industry.
- Sawmiils, of which there were none in the middle ages, only from about the 1920s. Many if not most large estates tended to have a sawmill.
Indeed, mills opened, closed and needed refurbishing throughout the middle ages and beyond. Rebuilding was common, owing to structural stress.
Why did the Vale's mills close?
- The Corn Laws which had protected domestic millers from cheap imports were repealed in 1846. It gradually became cheaper to import grain from the Prairies than grow and mill it in the Vale.
- Stream-driven mills could be built not on rivers but adjacent to or in larger areas of urban population which were the destination markets
- Rural depopulation.
- The introduction of steam trains which enabled a greater distribution of urban-ground products.
- Thereafter, road haulage, which enabled farmers to order feed from a distance farther than a horse and cart's ride.
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History