Milling about

Today's destination was ostensibly Hardwick Old Hall, an English Heritage site recommended to us. On the way we saw a sign saying "Start your visit to Hardwick Hall at Stainsby Mill," and even more enticing "milling today." How could we resist? Well, popping in for a visit turned into hanging out for over an hour chatting with the volunteers there, learning about the history of the mill, seeing the water wheel and grindstone in action and having a go at a hand-cranked mill.


We truly enjoyed learning about the mill and it had many fascinating stories. It's still powered by water when they are demonstrating, but it takes hundreds of gallons to get the horsepower needed to grind grain. They estimated in its heyday, it would have needed 20,000 gallons an hour to be economical. At that time, a river-fed pond across the road would have supplied it. We watched the buckets on the water wheel fill up and turn it around, transferring the spinning energy to a series of gears to make the top stone spin around. It was a carefully constructed system as the top stone had to be close enough to the millstone to crack the grains open but not actually grind stone to stone or it might spark. Sparks + fine powder = explosion! There was an alarm system rigged up so if the supply of grain pouring into the millstone got too low (meaning there soon wouldn't be enough grain to keep the stones apart) a bell would jingle, alerting the miller to stop the rotation before explosions. The volunteers also pointed out the shaft and gears were all made of hand-made cast iron. A local smithy would create molds out of sand and pour the cast iron - including one continuous shaft that was over 14 feet long! Some of the gears were even designed to be fitted with wooden teeth so if one broke, it could easily and cheaply be replaced, rather than recasting the whole gear.

A highlight for the boys was certainly the hand-cranked smaller mill wheel they kept outside. It was mounted inside a wooden box so you could have a hand at pouring in grain seeds and grinding them yourself. By the end of thirty minutes of play, they certainly looked like millers...flour covered and all!

The mill, nearby Hardwick Hall, and many other properties were owned by the Duke of Devonshire. The third Duke of Devonshire was so comparatively wealthy in his day that he was wealthier than any person today would have been at that time (even Bill Gates!). The properties passed on through the generations but a later Duke died unexpectedly at an early age and the death duties (estate tax) was so high (90%) that the family had to sell many properties to the government to help pay the taxes. This is how Stainsby Mill and the Hardwick Hall estate nearby stopped being a functioning mill in the 1950s and became a National Trust site.

I just love the fact that one of all of our favorite memories so far was just a serendipitous stop along a winding English road where we almost passed by, stopped the car and backed up on the one lane road, and said to ourselves, "Let's go see what there is to discover." This is really one of the reasons I love to drive - it allows for us to adventure without being tied to someone else's schedule or trying to predict what might be interesting.