In every city, town and village we have walked past old mills, now repurposed and turned into luxury flats most of them. It was good to see one still running as a mill, and even better to learn it was open as a museum. It was such a pleasure to walk around a working mill, see the history of past innovations. Had we not been about to embark on a walk of many miles up several large hills, we would have bought some flour…

Some of the exhibits discussed the changing technologies — both the move from the beautiful old water wheels that to my mind still signify a mill to the new water turbines that so much more efficiently powered the machinery, and the use of rollers to grind grain rather than the great circular millstones. Once upon a time mills were a ubiquitous feature of towns, villages and cities — I loved this map that showed just how many there once were in this area along the river systems:

The change in the grinding of grain to bake our bread is just one of the changes that modernity has brought to our lives, a change to both the rhythm of our days and the food that we eat. I wonder if we can even guess now just how great a change that has been.

The machinery inside was wonderful

The Hammer Mill — ‘Miracle Mill’ No. 2, used to pulverize stock into powder:

Measurers and grain elevators:

Flour sifters at all levels of fineness, and their machinery:

This was less the amazing old machinery, and more the title — Baron “Dreadnought” Grinder:

You climb story after story, here is a view of the beautiful country from the top:

An old dust collector at the very top, of exquisite carpentry surrounded by bewildering belts and struts

This area was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, which impacted upon flour mills as much as mills of any other kind — the Caudwell Mill was in the forefront of some of these changes. It was fascinating to continue our walk, get a bit lost per usual, and stumble across further remnants of this past. Not without first passing one of the most lovely farms I’ve seen:

and a chicken crossing a road — though too far away for questions:

We climbed up into the woods

We think we had already gone wrong at this point, but I could not be sorry. Because then we found this:

Something to do with the quarry we think, though perhaps another mill. Up through more forest

More ruins:

To find a fallen stack of old mill stones — victims of technological change left here unwanted and unneeded…

and perhaps this was part of the end of these quarries, now reclaimed by the forest and more beautiful thereby.

This is heading up to Stanton Moor, which was more beautiful still, but more on that later. Better to sit with thoughts of human endeavour, how much everything has changed, what happened to technologies left behind and the men who once excelled in them…

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