WHEELS TURNING AGAIN

Among the Oxfordshire mills that will be open for the 75th Anniversary National Mills Weekend is one at which there is particular cause for celebration. When a training day was held at the restored watermill at Coleshill in West Oxfordshire for the volunteers who will help at the first open day, on Sunday, and at future openings, grain was ground there for the first time for 85 years.

"The machinery worked as perfectly as if it had never been out of commission," said Simon Hudson, of the Mills Section of the Society for the Protection for Ancient Buildings (SPAB). Visitors to the mill will see the water wheel turning, the machinery operating, and the stones grinding. There are also hand-operated querns smaller millstones.

The restoration of the mill building was completed last year, but it has taken six months of work by a millwright to complete that of the machinery.

The National Trust, which owns the mill, employed Martin Watts, a millwright from Devon with over 40 years' experience, to undertake the task.

Sarah Dines, building surveyor for the trust's Thames and Solent region, was in charge of the project.

Sarah said: "The work involved Martin virtually taking the machinery apart. He has redressed the stones, renewed the bearings, fitted new cogs, and replaced 30 of the 33 buckets on the wheel which proved no longer serviceable."

The iron wheel itself, thought to be a 19th-century replacement of the original wooden one, remains.

There is now only one working pair of millstones. In earlier times there had been two, but in the mid-20th century, just before the fire which in 1952 destroyed Coleshill House, the driving gear for the second pair was removed in order to make way for pumping equipment to supply water to the house. The pumps are still in place.

A curiosity found in the restoration was a sluice across the mill pond. The reason for it is not clear, says Sarah. It could have been to keep fish from the mill pond, or possibly used as an eel trap. For its historic interest, the brick channel of the sluice has been left undisturbed.

The restoration of the mill follows the earlier River Restoration Project on the River Cole. The objective of this landscape scheme, most of the work for which was carried out ten years ago, was to return the river to a course nearer that of its natural flow.

Over the centuries it had been realigned, straightened and enlarged. Originally straightened for milling, it had more recently been deepened and widened to safeguard agricultural land from flooding, a management activity typical along many other rural rivers.

Upstream of the mill, the river was restored to its original course, retaining a small flow in the mill leat or trench, to join the old surviving 'mill bypass' channel.

This new, smaller channel encourages beneficial flood storage on the adjoining fields and allows fish to pass the mill weir.

Downstream, the river was reduced in size and meandered across the old course to a more natural profile. The existing mature riverside trees were retained.

The restoration of river bed and water levels and flood regime was achieved by cutting the new meandering river much higher up, similar to that which would have existed before the last major deepening scheme of the 1960s.

Along the mile or so length, bankside and in-channel vegetation has been left to re-colonise naturally, and this growth continues to be watched carefully as part of a comprehensive monitoring programme.

Another benefit to the landscape, says Martin James, manager of the River Restoration Project, now re-named the River Restoration Centre, is that there is now a natural flow of floodwater on the adjoining meadow near Coleshill, with the result that the rare snakeshead fritilliary that is found there can once again flourish.

The River Restoration Centre is an independent non-profit-making organisation established in 1994 to promote such restorations for enhanced bio-diversity and sustained economic use. The project at the River Cole was one of three in an EU-LIFE programme to demonstrate what can be achieved. This shows a rural example, with the River Skerne in Darlington, County Durham, providing one in an urban area, and the River Brede in the low-lying South Jutland area of Denmark illustrating improved environmental management of river valleys.

Each project continues to receive regular visits from environmentalists and students who can study the success of the ideas put into practice. At the time of the work, surveys were carried out among the local populations asking whether it was felt that the project was of value to their community, and the results were positive.

There has been a mill at Coleshill since the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, in which it is recorded. Remains of a building further upstream suggest that the site of the mill may have changed, possibly more than once, over the centuries.

The present machinery is thought to be mainly of the 18th century, with 19th-century alterations and additions. Many items, including the shaft and grain bins, were originally of wood, with some elements later being replaced by cast-iron components. It was changes in technology that led to corn mills such as that at Coleshill becoming redundant.

The present mill building adjoins a private house, so can only be visited on the specific open days, which, following National Mills Weekend, will be on the second Sunday of each month until October, from noon to 5pm. Admission costs £1 for adults and 50p for children. Coleshill is on the B4019 near Faringdon.

For the National Mills Open Weekend, Venn Watermill at Garford and Mapledurham Watermill are also open in Oxfordshire. For more details visit the website www.spab.org.uk