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The
Mills of Blisworth That the place now known as Blisworth was suited for a settlement would have been noticed by mankind thousands of years ago. There is a sheltered valley with a small stream into which flows a number of good springs. Owing to the shape of the valley, water catchment into the stream extends over an area of 2 square miles. Corn was originally stone-milled either by hand or with the power of oxen and it was the Romans who introduced the watermill to Britain. The Blisworth stream would barely be an adequate power source. There was a Roman villa or temple half a mile west of the 'village' with dated artifacts c. 200AD. There is maybe a trace of a more military-style presence of Romans, presumably c. 70AD, in the interesting alignment of a straight-line pathway joining the position of the church tower and the highest point on Gayton Hill, to the west, which is within 100 yards of the site of the villa. For this to be significant, one must assume that the bluff on which Blisworth Church stands was once a camp - indeed, it seems the place would have been a camp or stockade from Norman times to those of the Wakes c. 1450 but a specific mention of the location of Wake's 'seat', just to the south of the church, is dated 1718. The first mention of 'organised'
milling in Blisworth is in the Domesday Book, 1086. A freely
Anglicised and
extended version of the Domesday entry follows: Being a son of William the Conqueror, the "knight"
William Peverel owns many estates in England.
However, in this County, he holds four manors, one of which comprised 400
acres at Blisworth (Blidesworde,
probably pronounced 'blithesworth'). Within
his own farm there are 200 acres which are cultivated with 2 ploughs.
There are 12 common villagers and 6 small-holders and they have 7 ploughs
- making 9 ploughs in all. There
is a mill on a small stream valued at 2 shillings per
year. There are 4 acres of common
meadow and one and a half square miles of common woodland - this being
equivalent to 960 acres. The total
holding at Blisworth is therefore 1360 acres. The stream, now known as Fisher
Brook - the only one that could have supported any milling, delivers water at the
rate of only gallons per minute in the dry seasons. Even with a large millpond it is unlikely that water milling
could continue throughout the year. We
will return to this point but for now it seems perfectly reasonable that such a
low valuation was placed on the mill in 1086, a fifteenth of that for the mill
on the River Tove at Towcester, on account of the seasonal flow. Milling with the power from wind-sails is thought to have
been introduced in England not before 1300.
We have documented references to wind-milling at Blisworth as far back as
the 17th century but the earliest specific site for a mill is mentioned in the
mid-18th on a Grafton map -
on a hill known as Cliff Hill. One of the complicating factors regarding Fisher Brook is
that it was diverted to fill the Grand Junction Canal in 1795.
The canal company, by law, were obliged to buy out any millers using
water which is taken for the canal and in 1794 is recorded the purchase of a
(water) mill and garden from a Richard Dent.
On a map of probable canal company
authorship, c. 1820, a building is labelled
"Dent's Mill". From the above it appears that the Dent family operated both
a water mill and a windmill, not necessarily at the same time but when one
considers that the water mill could not be operated much in the summer then it
seems more than likely that Dents were in charge of both.
Indeed, it gets more complicated than that.
The first proper mapping of the Grafton estate in 1729 shows Blisworth
with its watermill. An annex map to the
main one shows a windmill on Cliff Hill. Maps
were drawn in those times to aid the management of rents and the miller's rent
arrangement would still be based on medieval principles - freehold with a tax on
the amount milled. In showing the
water mill (see also), the map clearly indicates a millpond of very modest size located
at the lower end of a field that was once the full millpond (Pond Bank Leys).
It seems the pond had totally silted up and by 1729 the stream had been
dug out all the way across the millpond to drain into a reservoir, some 200 yards by 40 yards,
next to the mill wheel.
Clearly this reservoir was mainly to provide a means of continuing the
draining of the field, being composed of excellent alluvium.
The reservoir would provide water for milling only through the wettest
part of the year. Note that the
brook was also known as Winterbrook. This
was the stake in milling which was bought from Richard Dent in 1794.
There is no record when the Duke decided to drain the area.
Maybe a study of the silting process could help in judging when
water-milling was so compromised. Using
Ordnance Survey data, a
survey was made of the likely original stream bed with the conclusion that the
height of the mill dam is/was 13 feet and this allows us to estimate the volume
of silt behind the dam. The
tonnage of silt, according to one expert, could have
accumulated within as little as 200 years bearing in mind the size of the
rainfall catchment area. A more
realistic estimate is ~1000 years because all the fields in the catchment were
either wooded or set to grass before 1700 and this would protect them from
erosion.
When this field was being prepared for building development (Pond
Bank) in the late 60s, a culvert at a depth of over 13 feet was set near to
the dam to drain the area more thoroughly.
A fresh water mollusc was found in the silt at the bottom - confirming
there was once either a stream bed there or the bottom of a pond. From such slender evidence a conjectural picture of Blisworth
milling may be painted. Pre-Norman
times saw the start of water milling using a dam that needed to be raised
occasionally to cope with the accumulation of silt.
By the 14th century the village acquired its stone church and perhaps a
windmill too in order for the miller to cope better with demands.
From that time, the miller would use both mills according to the weather. It must be remembered that milling needed to be an all-year
activity because corn was too bulky to be stored indoors and that policy would
risk rat infestation. It was stored
on-the-ear in ricks raised on "staddle" stones to combat rats and with thatched covers to
ward off sparrows and the weather. Furthermore,
any flour that had been milled by the traditional stone method would not keep
long. At some point the millpond
became somewhat silted and/or waterlogged so that for much of the year it was
neither a useful source of mill water nor a viable meadow.
Indeed it probably was the source of undesirable weed seeds and smells.
Maybe it was thought impracticable to raise the mill dam further since
the resultant larger pond would loose all the more from leakage and evaporation
and so the decision, at some time before 1729, was taken to firmly convert the
area into an excellent meadow. A chapter in milling ends with the last reference to a Dent -
this was on the award map of 1815 where he was assigned tenancy of the track to
the windmill. There are also some
maps showing what must be the derelict water-mill of Richard Dent's.
The tenancy of the windmill track was
overlooked in 1919 at the time of the Grafton Estate sale with the result that,
in the 1970s, it was suddenly realised the track was still owned by the current
Duke (or rather, The Earl of Euston). Richard
Dent appears in the 1841 census, aged 70. He
is presumably retired by then because on the Grafton survey map of 1838 it was a
lady known as Ann Westley
(Elizabeth formally) who was in charge of the windmill while her father-in-law
Joseph Westley snr. had a sizeable freeholding off the Stoke Road where he lived
and ran one of the village bakery businesses. This business
he handed to his son Samuel (see
map - incidentally, 1838 maps of the whole village are
available). This was the Joseph Westley that lost his bake house and
dwelling house in the great fire of Blisworth in 1798 but he
very quickly
re-established himself. Ann Westley was born as Elizabeth Campion, daughter of Robert
Campion who was Constable for the parish and an early member of the baptist
movement. Perhaps Elizabeth Campion was an apprentice to Richard Dent
and, with the Duke's approval, became the miller when he retired - no mean feat
for a woman in those times.
She married Samuel Westley, son of Joseph Westley (snr), and adopted the name
Ann to perhaps prevent confusion between the many Elizabeths in the family.
Although no record has yet been found, it has been mentioned by George
Freeston, from a probably un-catalogued document at the Northampton
Record Office, that Ann Westley was acknowledged in charge in 1825.
She certainly was in charge by 1838 being the time of the detailed
Grafton Survey of many parishes. A
Richard Rockingham, a miller, also appears in the 1841 census.
He was probably in the employ of Ann Westley, as were journeymen
mentioned in later censuses. Ann Westley's father-in-law, Joseph snr. married Mary Marriott and came to Blisworth around 1780 from Piddington. They presumably bought into the land off the Stoke Road, as it was freeheld in 1757 by someone unknown, and either set up or continued a bakery business. Ann Westley lived at the southern end of South Street that
was adopting its new name of Stoke Road. It
is very likely that she lived in Victoria Cottage
(now Victoria House) until she died in 1855.
With Samuel she had a son, Joseph jnr., who became very keen to build up
the milling business whilst retaining the bakery business.
Joseph jnr. was born in 1821 and was left with no father in 1832.
See the passage below that details the grave discovered in
the Baptist Chapel aisle. It was this Joseph, perhaps helped by the clout of his grandfather and
his mother who was clearly an influential lady, who established a steam powered
stone-grinding mill behind the Stoke Road bake
house and so stamped the name "Westley" onto the Northamptonshire
milling business. The steam mill was probably operational by 1850 and it can be assumed
that the windmill then fell into disuse and decay.
In 1855 Ann aka Elizabeth Westley died and is also buried
within the Baptist Chapel. Some time later, as Joseph was then in sole
charge of milling in Blisworth, he became dissatisfied with achievements
to date and, in 1877, he travelled to Austria
and Hungary with a
group of 40 millers in the County to learn about the
new technology of steam-powered roller-milling.
There was then an unfortunate fire
at the Stoke Road stone mill in 1879 and this spurred Joseph into quickly
establishing at Blisworth a roller mill on a wharf area by the canal.
It seems likely that Nunn Mill in Northampton was an operational roller
mill owned by Joseph with his sons by the time of the Blisworth fire so that
there was already the experience for Joseph to quickly build a copy of
Nunn Mill and have it
operational by 1883. The cause of the 1879 fire was not clearly identified. It may be significant that a mill-wright was called in on the day before the night of the fire, for undisclosed reasons. Interestingly, it appears from the millwright's own records, of repairs etc. after the fire, that the old windmill on Cliff Hill was refurbished by him to help with production capacity. Joseph and his wife Elizabeth (m.1847) were good employers,
liberals and benefactors in the village and they were members of the Anglican
church. They
probably shook the village by their both turning their back on the Anglican
Church in 1846 and being admitted to the Blisworth Baptist Church.
Perhaps they were not impressed by the new rector, Rev.
Barry, from 1842. It appears that Joseph had committed himself to financially helping the
Anglican school in the village in the purchase of
desks etc. but he found
little in common with the customs (perhaps the 'high church' habits) of the Anglican Church.
He became an influential figure in the Baptist Church by the time it decided to set
up its own weekend school in 1871. Ann Westley's sons, Joseph and his younger brother Robert, built many housing units in the village, notably the Westley buildings, which have been said to be for mill workers though the census data do not confirm this. The houses may have been favoured for those of the Baptist faith. Another item of local lore is that all the mill workers were of the Baptist faith. There is some evidence for this from records towards the end of the Victorian era but the well documented class division of rural life according to Anglican (tradesmen and professionals) vs. Non-conformist (working class) would generate such a bias anyway. Robert became a farmer in Milton. Joseph had eight sons, most of whom moved away or emigrated
to Canada or New Zealand; two died young. The milling business could never
support so many sons but two remained, Alfred and John, to eventually take over
the business. The milling story at
Blisworth begins to wane after Joseph died in 1894.
Download here the account
of his tribute and funeral. A modified letter-head for the business after
Joseph died is shown here. The Northampton Cooperative Society took over the large mill building at
the wharf in c.1919. Upon that sale a mill
inventory was made available. The hand-written
booklet notes articles in different parts of the mill building and certain
assets associated with specific fields in Blisworth parish. However, that
business had failed too by 1930 leaving much unemployment in the village.
The canal company then acquired the mill building and from then on there
was no milling in Blisworth. The
surviving bake house belonging to the Westleys was taken over by
the Sturgess’s. The Westleys continued in milling using various mills on the
River Nene through Northampton. These
were taken over by larger milling concerns as benefits from scaling were being
sought after WW II.
Of the corn milling in the village, very little remains. There are large round millstones in a couple of gardens which would date back to c.1880 if they were retrieved from the fire damaged premises in Stoke Road; no provenance is available. Finally a note about the two other booklets that refer to Blisworth milling. Mona Clinch's book (1938) has some inaccuracies regarding the use of the windmill and the timing of the closure of the water mill. That part of the book reproduced here carries appropriate corrections. Jane Evan's book (2003) that was commissioned by a member of the Westley family aims to cover not only early Blisworth milling history but also the 20th century story of Westley mills in Northamptonshire and their eventual absorption into other competing companies. There is no contention regarding the latter aim (which has not been looked into) but, unfortunately, the details of the Blisworth story, on both mills and family, are faulty in numerous instances, too numerous to list here. One or two instances spring from a reading of Clinch. There are only a few copies of the book in circulation - nevertheless here is the warning that this author considers it not wise consulting for Blisworth details. June 2006 Tony Marsh Footnote on the Westley family: We are fortunate that in late 2009 the Deacons of the Baptist Chapel had decided on a general refurbishment of the building. The entrance porch was brightened and the carpets in the aisles were taken up prior to their renewal. There, in the middle of the left aisle was found the grave stone of Samuel Westley and Ann aka Elizabeth Westley, the parents of the entrepreneur Joseph Westley. Below are the two photos we could take of the grave before being again covered by carpet. Note that it is now obvious that both parents of Joseph were Baptists while we know that Joseph himself began with the Anglican Church, though was christened by a baptist minister, but switched orientation at around the time of his mother's passing away.
The inscription on the grave stone reads: SAMUEL
WESTLEY ELIZABETH KEEP
YOURSELF IN THE LOVE OF GOD.
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In order to clarify one detail,
there is a house on the Stoke Road between Blisworth and Stoke Bruerne called
Windmill Cottage. Although there was a 'windmill' there it was not a mill for
grinding corn. It was built, perhaps no earlier than 1920, to raise water
for the house, being twin cottages in those days, for the farm on the other side
of the road and for stock. The sails drove a long reciprocating shaft
extending to the bottom of a well. There the shaft operated a water
pump. One or two people in the village recall leaping onto the shaft,
hanging on and enjoying the up and down ride! The pump supplied water to a
