Bourne Mill, Colchester

Historical report

Dr Chris Thornton

December 2007

2

Report prepared by

Dr Chris Thornton

Commissioned by

Anna Forrest

Curator (Interiors)

The National Trust

East of England Regional Office

© The National Trust 2007

3

Contents

Preface and acknowledgements 4

Note on abbreviations 5

1 Summary of primary sources 6

1.1 Documentary 6

1.2 Maps and images 8

2 Historic landscape setting 10

3 The medieval mill to c. 1539 19

4 The mill from the Dissolution to the end of the 16th

century 24

5 The mill in the 17th

and 18th

centuries 28

6 The mill in the 19th

and earlier 20th

centuries 31

7 The mill from 1935 to c. 1980 45

8 Conclusions and interpretation 67

9 Recommendations for further study 76

Bibliography of primary and secondary sources 78

Appendix: list of photographs and images 85

Supplementary Historical report 2015 88

4

Preface and acknowledgements

This report has been prepared in response to a commission from the National Trust to

investigate the documentary sources for Bourne mill and develop a greater understanding of

the site’s landscape, social and historical context.

I would like to thank the following individuals and organisations (and their staff) for their

generous assistance with this project, including advice on source material, access to

collections and manuscript notes, and general discussion and advice: Anna Forrest, Phil

O’Donoghue, Martin Atkinson, and Dave Piper, and other staff of The National Trust East of

England Regional Office (Westley Bottom); The National Trust Central Office (Queen

Anne’s Gate, London); Essex Record Office; Bedfordshire Record Office; Adam Garwood,

Sally Gale, David Andrews, Historic Environment, Essex County Council; Albert Sloman

Library, University of Essex; Colchester Public Library (local studies); The National

Archives, Kew; Professor Nigel Goose, University of Hertfordshire; Elizabeth Williamson,

Victoria County History of England; Miss Greenhill and Simon Hudson, Society for the

Protection of Ancient Monuments; Luke Bonwick, The Mills Archive; Janet Cooper; Lynette

Bloom; Andrew Phillips; Nick Easton and Paul Tritton.

All errors and omissions remain the author’s sole responsibility.

5

Note on abbreviations

Beds. RO Bedfordshire Record Office

Benham, Court Rolls W. Gurney Benham and I.H. Jeayes, Court Rolls of the

Borough of Colchester (3 vols, Colchester, 1921, 1938,

1941).

CPL Colchester Public Library (local studies)

Dir. Directory

DoE Department of Environment

ECC Essex County Council

ER Essex Review

ERO Essex Record Office

n.d. no date

RCHME Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of

England

NMR National Monuments Record (Swindon)

NT The National Trust

OS Ordnance Survey

SPAB Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

TNA The National Archives, Kew (formerly PRO)

VCH Essex Victoria County History of Essex

WRO Wiltshire Record Office

6

1 Summary of primary sources

1.1 Documentary1

Bourne Mill is relatively poorly served by historical sources before the 18th

century. For the

Middle Ages, when the site was owned by the Benedictine abbey of St. John’s, Colchester,

the main sources are the abbey’s chartulary and ledger (memorandum) book and the court

rolls of the borough of Colchester. After the abbey’s dissolution in 1539 the mill first passed

to the crown and then through various private hands before being purchased by Sir Thomas

Lucas in 1590. These property transfers are recorded in various state papers in the National

Archives and also in the Colchester court rolls.

Although a fair amount of manorial documentation is preserved in the abbey’s ledger book,

the original court and account rolls, surveys, leases and other administrative documents have

not survived.2 They must have been either lost or discarded after the dissolution of the abbey

or were destroyed during the turbulence of the mid 17th

century. The Lucas mansion on the

abbey site was plundered by a Colchester mob in 1642 during the First Civil War when

rumour spread that the royalist John Lucas was gathering men and supplies there to aid

Charles I. Later, during the siege of Colchester in the Second Civil War of 1648, the mansion

was destroyed.3

For the reasons cited above there are precious few sources covering the period of the

construction of the present mill building (1591), and for half a century thereafter.

Additionally, the mill is not mentioned in the will of Sir Thomas Lucas (1611), although the

neighbouring Cannock mill was recorded therein.4 A Lucas account book survives for the

later 1640s providing a small amount of information on the mill’s lessees and rent, but then

the documentary record falters again. Two possibilities remain for bridging this documentary

gap. First, there may be some references to the mill in the Colchester court rolls for the 17th

century, but these would have to be checked individually as they are not calendared and that

would be a time-consuming process. Second, further sources may survive in the National

1 For a full list of primary sources see below, Bibliography.

2 See: Rev. Canon J.L. Fisher, ‘The Leger Book of St. John’s Abbey, Colchester’, Transactions of the

Essex Archaeological Society, XXIV (1951), pp.77-9. 3 John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers

(Cambridge, 1999), pp.32-9; D. Appleby, Our Fall Our Fame: The Life and Times of Sir Charles Lucas

(Newtown, 1996), pp.54, 152; VCH Essex, ix, pp.105, 304. 4 TNA, PROB 11/118.

7

Archives which cannot be traced using ‘Bourne Mill’ or similar search terms. All sources

potentially containing material on the Lucas family in the 17th

century could be searched,

although again there is no certainty of any success.

By the 18th

century the estate had passed by marriage into the Grey family, earls of Kent, and

substantial parts of their estate and personal archives have been preserved at the Bedfordshire

Record Office. Sources available from 1730 include many leases, and also estate accounts and

surveys some of them with maps. These are significant sources as they help to demonstrate

the mill’s fulling operations through to the 1820s. Further explanatory material becomes

available over the first half of the 19th

century, including material on the Colchester baymaker

Peter Devall and the oral testimony from some of his mill workers. Detail concerning the

millers, mill workers and their families is also available from the national census returns

(from 1841) and local directories (from 1848). The role of the Pulford family, lessees in the

late 19th

century and owners from 1917, can be partly reconstructed from the Bedfordshire

Record Office sources, and the census and directories, although a further investigation might

reveal some surviving family members with knowledge of the mill.

The nature of the available documentation changes after 1936 when A.E. Pulford sold the

mill, the pond and part of the land to The National Trust. The Trust’s own archives, at both

regional and central level, contain a wealth of information concerning the maintenance and

conversion of the structure and the management of the site and of the various lessees, both in

official reports, surveys, and minutes, and also in copious correspondence. Most of these files

have been checked, but of necessity some of the correspondence has had to be viewed at

speed or occasionally sampled. The archives of SPAB have also proved invaluable. Although

they often duplicate the material held by The National Trust, they occasionally provide a

significant corrective or at least a different perspective. Included in these two organisations’

archives are numerous newspaper and magazine cuttings, reporting changes in management,

the mill’s history, or the site’s amenity value. When added to those preserved elsewhere, for

example at the Colchester Public Library (local studies), they provide an important source for

external and public perceptions of the property. Finally, a journal maintained by a Colchester

museum curator, E.J. Rudsdale, has provided yet another viewpoint, this time from a local

individual closely involved with the property in the 1940s and 1950s. All of these sources

confirm the great difficulty The National Trust has had in managing and conserving the mill

and finding an effective purpose for the building and its site.

8

1.2 Maps and images5

Bourne mill is perhaps even more poorly served by cartographic sources than by documentary

ones. The earliest depictions of Colchester date from the start of the 17th

century, but whilst

these include the site of St. John’s abbey they do not stretch far enough south of the town to

include the site of the mill. Later, larger scale, maps of the town from the 18th

century, such as

that included in Morant’s History and Antiquities ……of Colchester (1748), similarly do not

cover the area.6 The earliest useful depiction is therefore on the county map by John Chapman

and Peter André from 1777 (see overleaf), although the mapping scale at 2” to the mile does

not allow for much detail.7

The first maps to reveal detailed information concerning the site’s layout are two estate

surveys preserved in the Bedfordshire Record Office from 1797 and 1824. Digital copies have

been obtained of both of these maps and they are reproduced later in this report. Normally,

one would expect such information to be supplemented by a Tithe Commutation map from

the 1830s or 1840s, but Bourne mill is not depicted on the tithe map for St. Giles, of which

parish it was a detached portion, or of the neighbouring and surrounding St. Botolph’s parish.

The maps do not cover the Bourne mill site and buildings because the land was effectively

tithe-free due to its former monastic owner, St. John’s abbey, having appropriated the tithes in

the Middle Ages, ownership of which had then passed to the Lucas family.8

The principal topographical sources for the 19th

and 20th

century are therefore the series of

Ordnance Survey maps, starting with the OS 1” of 1805 (first edition, plus the surveyor’s

drawings preserved at the ERO), moving through to the important OS 1:2,500 or 25” (first

edition, surveyed 1876, and subsequent editions) and the OS 1:10,560 or 6” (1967 edition).

These OS maps assist the identification of boundary changes, land use, buildings, and the size

of Bourne Pond.

5 For full details of maps see below, Bibliography (primary sources). For images see below, Appendix:

list of photographs and images. 6 John Speed (1610); The Siege of Colchester (1648): copies of maps in ERO; P. Morant, The History and

Antiquities of the most Ancient Town and Borough of Colchester in the County of Essex (1748, 2nd

edition,

London, 1768), map ‘The Ichnography of Colchester’. 7 J. Chapman and P. André, Map of Essex (1777).

8 ERO, D/CT 91 (1840); St. Giles; D/CT 90 (1837). See below, p. 13.

9

The earliest surviving image of Bourne mill is an undated 19th

century painting of the mill, its

pond and the surrounding landscape. E.J. Rudsdale also obtained some photographic plates

locally from “old Smith the farrier” who lived in Maldon Road, Colchester, apparently taken

by George Joslin about 1856, one of which depicts Bourne mill.9 A descendant of James

Ashwell also has photographs of that 19th

-century miller, his wife Mary Ann Ashwell and

daughter Emma Ashwell, and copies are held at Bourne Mill. Other surviving images located

so far all appear to date from the last decade of the 19th

century and through the 20th

century.

They are found in the files of four main repositories – The National Trust, ERO, NMR, and

SPAB, and also in a number of published books and articles. It is also likely that many

postcards survive of this local landmark, but time has not been available to fully search all

available postcard collections. Details of many images and postcards identified so far are

included in the Bibliography to this report.

Bourne mill as depicted on a postcard of 1910

9 ERO, transcript of E.J. Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 27

th May, 1943.

10

2 Historic landscape setting

The mill is located on a stream within a small valley about 2 miles south of Colchester town

centre. The stream, which has clearly cut the valley from the surrounding plateau, rises from

springs a short distance to the west of the mill and runs in an easterly direction until it joins

the river Colne of which it is a minor tributary. The name ‘Bourne’, as applied to the mill and

stream, although first recorded in the 12th

and 13th

centuries, is likely to be an ancient one. It

derives from OE burna (= stream), and is a name applied to other watercourses in the region,

such as the larger Bourne, a tributary of the Cam near the Cambridge/Essex border.10

The current water supply is arranged as follows. The stream runs eastward along the valley

and under the Mersea Road and thence into a large mill pond, Bourne Pond. The pond is held

back by a large earth dam across the valley on and beneath which stands the mill. The

millrace, controlled by a shutter, leads under the floor of the main hall and drives an overshot

water wheel located in the basement. The turning wheel provided power to the mill machinery

and grinding stones. There is an overflow channel to the south so that water may by-pass the

mill when necessary or not in use. Whether these were the earliest, medieval, arrangements

remains uncertain, as there seems nothing about the site that would preclude the location of

the mill somewhere else on the dam or the use of an undershot wheel.

The location is first illustrated on Chapman and André’s map of Essex dated 1777 (overleaf),

labelled as ‘Bone Ponds Mill’.11

This is also the first map to show the contours of the valley.

The proximity of the mill to Colchester and its port (hythe) is immediately apparent, as well

as the good local road communications. St. John’s abbey, and the later Lucas mansion, was

located in the enclosures at the top right-hand corner of the map as reproduced overleaf. In

order to reach the mill from the town and St. John’s abbey local inhabitants merely had to

travel south along the Mersea Road before turning left into and along the valley of the

Bourne. The stream was evidently powerful enough to drive several mills along its length,

including Cannock mill (‘Kennic’ on this map), and Hull (later Distillery) mill. Cannock mill

also passed into the hands of the Lucas family and thence to the earls of Kent (see below,

p.25).

10

P.H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex, EPNS vol. XII (Cambridge, 1935), p.373; M. Christy, ‘Essex Rivers

and their Names’, Essex Naturalist, XXI (1926), p.301. 11

J. Chapman and P. Andre’s, Map of Essex (1777).

11

Location of Bourne mill and pond as depicted in 1777

Magnification of the 1777 map allows us to say a little more about the site. At this date

Bourne Pond was of roughly similar dimension as it is today. The dam was evidently not

drawn to scale, being extended and occupied by the mapmakers’ symbol for a watermill (a

stylised waterwheel). There were apparently three buildings on the site or nearby. The largest

adjacent to the wheel symbol must depict Bourne mill itself. Close by is the mill cottage,

occupying the same site as today, surrounded by what looks like a curtilage with gardens,

orchards or similar. To the north against the road is a third building that no longer exists.

12

The 1777 map can be compared with the two surviving estate maps of 1797 and 1824. The

one dated 1797, reproduced below, appears to only depict the mill cottage and not the mill or

the third building. The depiction of the mill pond is also differs from that of Chapman and

André. The ‘Lower mill pond’ of 1797, nearly 2½ acres in extent, was located roughly in the

position of Bourne Pond depicted in 1777 and existing today, but there was also an ‘Upper

mill pond’, nearly a further acre in size, located to the west. In between the two ponds was

‘Lower Rushy piece’, and above the western pond ‘Upper Rushy piece’, both about half an

acre in size. The names of these areas are very suggestive of silted up areas which had

become overgrown with rushes; in an 1809 survey they were described as ‘chiefly coarse and

sedgy’.12

A smaller western pond and some surrounding marsh or similar environment, in

addition to the main Bourne pond, is also depicted on the surveyor’s drawing for the OS 1”

map of 1805.13

Bourne mill and pond in 1797 (Beds. RO, L26/975)

Although this map evidence might suggest the former existence of a single large pond,

stretching all the way from the mill to the Mersea Road (an area of just over 4½ acres),

12

Beds. RO, L26/975; L26/979. 13

ERO, OS 1” (1805) surveyor’s drawings for Essex, sheet 15.

13

fieldwork examination suggests that this was not the case. There is a high bank or dam at the

eastern end of the higher, western, pond and then land then falls away by several metres

through what was ‘Lower Rushy piece’ to the level of the main Bourne Pond. The two ponds

are therefore quite separate features. The origin and use of the second pond is an interesting

question. It could have served to hold an additional water supply to assist the mill, but another

attractive interpretation is that it served as a fish-pond. These two suggested functions are, of

course, not necessarily mutually exclusive.

A little can also be said of the other fields around the mill c. 1800. Broom Hill to the south of

the ponds was described in 1809 as ‘a light sandy hill with broom’, while Pettis meadow on

the western side of the Mersea Road as ‘a poor sandy hill’. The sand had undoubtedly been

exposed as the stream cut its valley through the clay. Gravel was similarly exposed at

Cannock mill. These lands were evidently regarded as poor and the surveyor recommended

that they be planted with timber, although in 1824 they were still recorded as pasture.

Downstream to the east of the mill lay Great and Little Meadow both described in 1809 as

‘low, wet, and coarse’, and presumably prone to water-logging or flooding.14

As already noted, the mill was not depicted in detail on the St. Giles tithe map because the

owners of the land had already appropriated the tithe. Nonetheless, the tithe maps do reveal

that the mill and its surrounding lands, about 16 acres in total, formed a detached portion of

the parish of St. Giles otherwise entirely surrounded by St. Botolph’s. This is due to an

accident of manorial and parochial history. In the Middle Ages St. Giles was the parish church

of St. John’s abbey and served the inhabitants of its estate, but Bourne mill had been a

separate and additional donation lying at some distance from the abbey site and its main

landholdings (about 1½ miles distant). The mill and pond therefore became a detached portion

of St. Giles, surrounded by another parish controlled by other landowners.15

The next major source for the environs of the mill is the OS 1:2,500 (25”) map, surveyed in

1876 (reproduced overleaf). This superb survey reveals that the second, western, pond

survived into the later 19th

century, and that the stream skirted it rather than running through

it, entering the main Bourne pond directly in its south-west corner. Other small ponds or

pieces of water to the east of the mill dam and south of the mill itself, can also be seen on this

14

Beds. RO, L26/979; L26/981, 982/1-2. 15

See the account of St. Giles church in VCH Essex, vol. ix, pp.315-17.

14

map, and may relate in some way to water management or perhaps to fish breeding. Both the

main passage of the stream under the mill and the overflow channel are also clearly marked

on this map.

In terms of the general landscape environment, Broom Hill had been planted with timber or

brush by 1876. Later, it had certainly become a considerable sweet chestnut plantation,

presumably for production of timber, of which much evidence survives. The second pond was

surrounded by trees, perhaps willows, as was the western edge of Bourne pond itself, and

these again had timber value. Otherwise the mill and pond generally had a quite open aspect,

presumably because much of the land was used for grazing; this picture is confirmed by

photographs of the area before the mid 20th

century (for example, see images below, p.17).

Bourne mill and pond in 1876 (OS 1:2,500 first edition, sheet XXVII no.16: copy in ERO)

A further series of OS 1:2,500 (25”) maps, dated 1898, 1923 and 1940 (reproduced overleaf),

indicate that relatively little landscape change occurred in the later 19th

century and first

decades of the 20th

century. Broom Hill remained covered in timber and undergrowth. By

1923 there were clear signs that the second pond was becoming silted up and covered in

reeds, as was the western end of Bourne pond where silt was presumably accumulating. The

willows along the edges of the ponds had either been removed or were not depicted on these

later surveys. Between 1898 and 1923 a small wooden hut had appeared on the pond to the

immediate north-west of the mill, which is also depicted on a postcard of 1910 (see above,

p.9). Its purpose is unknown, but it was perhaps a boat house.

15

More dramatic changes were evident by 1940. The upper pond had by now disappeared and

had apparently merged into the surrounding enclosure (Upper Rushy piece); it may even have

been deliberately filled-in. Bourne pond itself was marked with further reeds indicating the

first stages of the serious silting that was to affect the pond once milling became irregular or

stopped altogether. The ownership of the mill and its site by The National Trust is clearly

marked, as was the fact that the mill was now disused.

Bourne mill and pond in 1898 (OS 1:2,500 (25”), second edition, sheet 27.16: copy in ERO)

Bourne mill and pond in 1923 (OS 1:2,500 (25”), new series, sheet 37.7: copy in ERO)

Urban development now began to seriously affect the site of the mill and threaten its historic

environment. Between 1923 and 1940 Little Meadow to the north-east of the mill had

apparently been sold by the Pulford family and was developed as a light industrial yard (it

was later to be redeveloped again for housing as Brookside Close). The property transferred to

The National Trust in 1936 comprised the mill, mill cottages and yard, Bourne pond and

surrounding land, but not Great, Little and Pettis meadows. Meanwhile across Bourne Road

16

appeared semi-detached housing as Colchester’s interwar suburbs began to expand to the

south-east of the town. This process culminated in the immediate post-war period when a

housing estate was built by the local authority on land to the south of the mill. The dating of

this estate development is evocatively reflected in the names selected for the streets:

Roosevelt Way, Churchill Way, Mulberry Avenue, Normandy Avenue, and Stalin Road.

Bourne mill and pond in 1940 (OS 1:2,500 (25”), new series, sheet 37.7: copy in ERO)

Bourne mill and pond in 1967 (OS 1:10,560 (6”), sheet TM 02 SW: copy in ERO)

17

The general environs are depicted in many photographs available for the 20th

century. Those

taken at the time of the RCHME survey (c. 1922/23), indicate that it was surrounded by open

grassy pasture, probably rough grazing, cordoned off by barbed wire fencing. Around the mill

itself, on the east and north sides, was white wooden picket fencing.16

Two photographs of Bourne mill c. 1923 showing the open pasture surroundings and the two

types of fencing (copyright English Heritage/NMR).

16

Royal Commission on Historical monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Essex,

vol. 3, p.72; NMR photographs (see appendix).

18

Later photographs available from the NMR and other archives indicate that the area around

the mill was already becoming overgrown in the 1940s, and maintenance of the grounds was

to become an increasing problem. The National Trust regional office also possesses some

photographs showing work being undertaken on clearance of fallen timber and undergrowth,

and the disposal of dumped rubbish, at various dates in the second half of the 20th

century.17

17

For examples: NT Regional Office, Green photograph album.

19

3 The medieval mill to c. 1539

The origin of the Bourne Pond mill cannot, at present, be stated with certainty. Its location as

the highest water mill on a substantial stream feeding the Colne may indicate an ancient site.18

In the Domesday survey of 1086 six local water mills were recorded in Colchester (3),

Greenstead (1) and Lexden (2), but the balance of probabilities appears to be against one of

these being identified with Bourne mill.19

Nevertheless, only ten years later the foundation

charter of St. John’s abbey in 1096 recorded the donation of two fish-ponds and a mill by

Eudo Dapifer (the steward of William the Conqueror’s household).20

It is highly probable that

this mill can be equated with Bourne mill. The identification was first made by Phillip Morant

in his History and Antiquities ………of Colchester (1748), in which Morant added the phrase

“Bourne-mill and ponds” in parentheses when citing Eudo’s gift of the two fish-ponds and

mill.21

Some earlier studies, including an early National Trust guidebook for the mill, have stated

that the earliest reference to “Bourdemill and ponds” occurs in 1120.22

The source has been

given as the Colchester court rolls, but as these do not survive until 1310/11 there is evident

confusion. The true origin of the statement has not been discovered during this study. It may

have arisen from a source as yet unidentified, but it is also possible that it developed from a

misunderstanding or conflation of Morant’s description of Eudo’s donation (cited above) and

the probable date of Eudo’s death and confirmation of his gifts (probably 1119-20).23

Whatever the truth, Hervey Benham’s statement in his Essex Mills, that Bourne mill can be

traced back to the twelfth century is certainly correct.24

The chartulary of St. John’s abbey

records agreements over various parcels of land in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,

including some between the Abbot of St. John’s and the Prior of St. Botolph’s, and these

reveal the proximity of the lands in question to Bourne mill, Bourne pond and the abbey’s

18

Certainly the Bourne stream would seem a possible location for Roman or Anglo-Saxon milling activity. 19

VCH Essex, ix, p.259. 20

“duo vivaria et unum molendinum”: S.A. Moore, ed., Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Johannis Baptiste de

Colecestria, vol. i (London, 1897), p.2. 21

“In Colchester; two carucates of land; a messuage; two Fish-ponds, and a Mill [Bourne-mill and ponds] and an

Osier-ground. And a Fair of Four days, at the nativity of St. John”: P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of the

most Ancient Town and Borough of Colchester in the County of Essex (1748, 2nd

edition, London, 1768), p.141,

evidently citing Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, or, the history of the ancient abbies, and other

monasteries, hospitals, cathedrals and collegiate churches in England and Wales (London, 1693), II, p.97 (item

892-3) or the later editions. 22

S.E.G. Ponder (revised P. Watts), The National Trust: Bourne Mill (Colchester, 1969). 23

See also: VCH Essex, ii, pp.93-4. 24

H.Benham, Some Essex Water Mills (2nd

edition, 1983), p.96.

20

fish-pond (vivarium).25

In 1285 or 1286 the Colchester burgesses also complained that the

abbey had established gallows and ducking stools at various sites within the Liberty of

Colchester including Bourne Ponds.26

Four millers were recorded in Colchester in 1301, and it

has been suggested that these were probably the tenants of the three main mills on the Colne –

North Mill, Middle (or King’s Mill) and Stokes Mill, and of the Abbot’s mill at Bourne

Pond.27

The landed estates of St. John’s abbey were not as extensive as many large monastic houses,

but among its early endowments were manors in Weeley, Pitsea, Brightlingsea, Greenstead,

Little Bardfield, Mundon (all Essex) and Wickham Skeith (Suffolk).28

Bourne mill did not

form a part of those holdings, but instead lay within an ancient estate south of Colchester

which had been subdivided in the 10th

and 11th

centuries among various landowners. Two

portions of that estate had later mainly become the parishes of St. Giles and St. Botolph’s

associated with St. John’s abbey and St. Botolph’s priory respectively, as well as lying within

the Liberties of the borough of Colchester. St. John’s abbey did, however, hold an important

manor at nearby Greenstead, on the opposite bank of the river Colne.29

The mill and its ponds

were thus conveniently placed economic assets, both for milling and fishing, in relation to the

abbey’s own needs, those of its tenants and for commercial relationships with Colchester

townspeople.

The abbey leased the mill for a fixed rent to a lessee, either the miller himself or perhaps an

investor who would then employ a professional miller to work the mill. In 1326 the abbey

leased Bourne mill to John Rogger of Colchester for three years at a rent of 8 marks and 2

shillings. A quite typical clause in the lease made the abbey responsible for the provision (and

presumably repair) of the main milling equipment, namely to find large timbers and ironwork

such as the mill spindle, axe, wheel and stones.30

As the mill lay within the Liberty of Colchester, it was subject to regulation by the borough’s

courts. The first surviving Colchester court roll of 1311 records the abbey’s (unnamed) tenant

25

Moore, ed., Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Johannis Baptiste, vol. ii., pp.499, 511-12, 604-5. 26

VCH Essex, ix, p.50; W. Gurney Benham, The Red Paper Book of Colchester (Colchester, 1902), pp.38-9. 27

W. Marriage and C. Fell-Smith, ‘The History of Corn Milling in Essex’, ER, xvi (1907), pp.184-5. 28

VCH Essex, ii. pp.93-4. 29

VCH Essex, ix. pp.382-3, 385-6, 404, 409-10. 30

ERO, St. John’s abbey ledger book,, ff.63v.-64.

21

of Bourne mill in a list of millers using incorrect measures.31

Thereafter the virtually

continuous series of court rolls contain references to named millers at Bourne Pond and,

although the rolls have not been searched themselves, court roll transcripts and other sources

have provided the following selection of the mill’s ‘farmers’ (i.e. lessees):32

DATE LESSEE NOTES

1326 John Rogger

1333 John atte Halle later of Middle mill

1336-1340 John Wyger later of North mill

1345-46 John Stokfyssh also of North mill

1351 William Speller

1352 Thomas Knop

1353 John Knyght, John Pulham

and John Dollard

1354 John Knyght also of Old Mill

1356-1366 Thomas Knop

1372 John Bellamy

1374-1378 John Smart

1406 John Potton

1413-1414 Thomas Sawyer

1525 Thomas Buxstone

Late medieval town authorities monitored mills within their jurisdiction because of their

concern to protect the food supply for the local community and to prevent corruption. The

enforcement of such regulations reveal that Bourne mill remained a corn-grinding mill

throughout the 14th

and 15th

centuries, as its lessees were regularly amerced for faulty

measures and the taking of excessive toll (sometimes ‘double toll’). The lessees or millers

were penalised for taking excessive toll in 1311, 1333, 1336-37, 1340, 1345-46, 1351-54,

1356-66, 1372, 1374-78, 1393, 1404, 1406 and 1413.33

31

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. i, pp.50, 60. 32

Table based upon: Benham, Court Rolls, vols. i-iii; ERO Colchester Court Roll transcripts, passim; ERO, St.

John’s abbey ledger book, ff.63v.-64; TNA SC6/Hen VIII/976, mm.3d, 11d.-12. 33

Benham, Court Rolls, vols. i-iii, passim; ERO Colchester Court transcripts, roll 28, rot.17 (1393); Roll 33,

rot.13 (1404); Roll 39, rot.3r. (1413); I.H. Jeayes, ‘Court Rolls of Colchester’, Transactions of the Essex

Archaeological Society, new series, xiv (1915), p.88.

22

Relatively little can be said about the individuals concerned without further work on the court

rolls. Some only leased the mill for a few years. However, it is also clear that there were many

interconnections between millers and different mills. For example, John atte Halle, lessee of

Bourne mill in 1333, had by 1336 moved to Middle mill.34

John Wygger, lessee of Bourne

mill 1336-40, had by 1345 moved to North mill, the ‘farm’ (lease) of which he shared with

Thomas Deynes and John Stokfyssh. Deynes was evidently a Colchester baker as in 1353 he

was fined for the price-fixing of bread. Stokfyssh, meanwhile, also held the Bourne mill lease

in 1345-46,35

and his surname (= stock-fish?), if truly occupational, may indicate by-

employment in freshwater fish-breeding and fishing, presumably in Colchester mill-ponds.36

Evidently a lease was sometimes taken on by a consortium, such as John Knyght, John

Dollard and John Pulham in 1353. It is possible that Knyght was the actual miller and Dollard

and Pulham his business partners, as both the latter were also fined in 1353 as Colchester

bakers engaged in price-fixing.37

Pulham seems to have had a long-term interest in the mill,

perhaps as a financial backer, for over two decades later in 1375 he was again prosecuted

before Colchester’s court this time for having ‘a share’ in Bourne mill, contrary to the town’s

order forbidding any baker to have such a share in one of the town’s mills. This ordinance

was presumably enacted to avoid manipulation of the food supply.38

Some further detail is available on Thomas Knop, the lessee and miller in 1352 and from 1356

to 1366, and his family’s economy. While Knop was prosecuted for taking excessive toll, his

wife was fined in 1361, 1364 and 1366 for breaking the assize of ale and may have brewed

‘professionally’.39

They were evidently successful as Knop was admitted as a Colchester

burgess in 1365.40

A probable relative, John Knop, who worked Lexden mill in the later 14th

century, is known to have employed a servant.41

The miller at Bourne mill who was fined for

taking excessive toll in 1413, Thomas Sawyer, was prosecuted again in the following year for

being in the habit of emparking (i.e. holding back) the water in Bourne mill pool resulting in

34

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. i, pp.109, 142. 35

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. i, p.142, 194; vol. ii, p.10. 36

The date in the 1340s falls into the period when surnames were becoming hereditary, but the context is

certainly suggestive. 37

Benham, Court Rolls, vol ii, p.10. 38

F.A. King, ‘The Troublesome Bakers of Colchester’, Essex Countryside, vol. 9, no. 47 (1960), pp. 54-5;

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. iii, p.69. 39

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. ii, pp.130-1, 142-3, 183-4. 40

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. ii, p.180. 41

Benham, Court Rolls, vol. ii, p.18; vol. iii, passim.

23

flooding. That may also indicate that the pool was inadequate or perhaps required emptying of

silt, an activity that most medieval mill ponds would periodically require.42

There is no direct evidence that Bourne mill ever worked as a fulling mill during the later

Middle Ages, although the possibility should not be dismissed out of hand. The clothing

industry was of such major significance in Colchester and the surrounding region that the

economic incentives for conversion to fulling must have been high in certain periods. A

fulling mill was recorded at Colchester as early as 1247 and some of the major Colchester

mills such as Stokes mill and North mill appear to have operated solely as fulling mills by the

15th

century.43

It is also known that both functions, corn grinding and fulling, could where

necessary take place under a single roof with two separate sets of milling equipment driven by

a single wheel. Additional external wheels could also be added to existing mills.44

In 1429 St.

John’s abbey complained that Colchester’s burgesses had set up roadblocks to prevent men

grinding corn or fulling cloth at the abbey’s mills, but whether these events involved Bourne

mill is not documented.45

42

ERO Colchester Court Roll transcripts, roll 39, rot. 3r. (1413), rot. 18d. (1414). 43

VCH Essex, ix, pp.259-60. 44

M. Watts, Water and Wind Power (Shire Publications, 2000), pp.34, 36. 45

VCH Essex, ix, p.260.

24

4 The mill from the Dissolution to the end of the 16th

century

St. John’s abbey was dissolved in 1538 and some parts of the monastic estate were

immediately granted or sold by Henry VIII. For a while the site of the abbey and other

assets, including Bourne mill, remained in the hands of the crown.46

In 1539 the mill was

still under lease to the abbey’s former lessee, Thomas Buxstone, who had held it from the

abbey for a term of 21 years from the 5th of November 1525. Buxstone paid an annual

‘farm’ (i.e. rent) of £6 per annum, although he also had responsibility for repairs. Bourne

mill was described in the royal account roll as a ‘water mill’, while later in the same

document another former mill of the abbey in royal hands, Stokes mill, was specifically

identified as a fulling mill. Although not conclusive, this may be taken as reasonable

evidence that Bourne mill had continued to operate as a corn mill until at least the mid-

16th

century.47

Bourne mill remained part of the crown estate until the 6th of June 1544 when it was

granted, along with Bourne Ponds, a meadow called Balcon or Balcorne mead, and the

tithes of Pyes Markes mead and Chese mead in Colchester, and other named lands in

West Bergholt, to Richard Duke for a total of £163 12s. 8d.48

Duke was clerk of the

Council of Augmentations and therefore well placed to acquire monastic assets from the

crown, either as an investment or on behalf of other parties. It seems unlikely that Duke

had any interest in milling per se, for only three months later, on the 5th of September

1544, Henry VIII granted him a licence to sell Bourne mill to Augustine Beriff (or

Beryff), bailiff of Colchester, and William his son.49

The sale was also recorded in the

Colchester court rolls in 1545, when Duke and his wife Elizabeth were recorded as

having quitclaimed ‘a little mill called Bourne mill in St. Giles’ to Augustine Beriff,

alderman of Colchester, his wife Joan and his son William.50

The Beriff family retained

possession of the mill for 35 years, but given their high social status are likely to have

leased the mill to professional millers.

46

VCH Essex, ix, pp.303, 385. 47

TNA, SC6/Hen VIII/976, mm.3d, 11d.-12. 48

Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, XIX (1), (HMSO, 1903), p.495. 49

Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, XIX (2), (HMSO, 1903), p.195;

VCH Essex, ix, p.378. 50

ERO, D/DU 116/1; ERO Colchester Court Roll transcripts, roll 115, rot.8d.

25

In 1580 the crown granted a licence to William Beriff, the elder, and his wife Katherine,

then said to dwell at Chapel in Essex, to alienate Bourne pond mill and lands to John

Gibson (or Gybson) and his wife Joan and the heirs of John. Gibson was described as a

miller, currently in occupation, so it seems likely that he was the professional miller

employed by the Beriff family to work the mill. The grant also recorded the pond’s fish,

indicating that the property’s value was not solely derived from milling, as had earlier

been the case under the ownership of St. John’s abbey in the Middle Ages.51

Gibson was

fined before Colchester courts in 1581/2 for taking excessive toll, as had the earlier tenant

millers of the abbey.52

He worked the mill for a decade, but in 1590 he and his wife

Agnes sold the mill with its appurtenances and tithes, Lakes croft and Lakes meadow, the

waters and ponds called ‘Bourne Pondes’, with all the fish and other profits, to Sir

Thomas Lucas (d. 1611).53

The Lucas family had other interests in milling, for Cannock

mill further downstream (then part of the manor of West Donyland), had been leased to

Edward Lucas from 1575. The Cannock lease later passed to Sir Thomas Lucas for 50

years from 1594, and the mill was presumably afterwards purchased as ownership of the

two mills appears intertwined from this point on.54

Sir Thomas Lucas was an important figure in Colchester and Essex from the 1560s

onwards, serving as Sheriff of Essex and Recorder of Colchester at various times. He was

the son and heir of John Lucas, town clerk and MP for Colchester (d. 1556) who had

purchased the site of the abbey in 1548 and converted it to a mansion. In purchasing the

mill site Sir Thomas thus re-established its connection with St. John’s, probably as part of

an intentional policy to reconstitute the abbey’s estate. Earlier in 1563, he had purchased

the abbey’s former manor of Greenstead, which after the Dissolution had initially passed

to Thomas Cromwell and then other landowners. Sir Thomas combined the manor with

farms at Rovers Tye, Dilbridge and Mile End, to form an important landholding in the

east and north of Colchester’s Liberty.55

As well as establishing themselves as the most

notable local gentry family by their acquisition of the abbey’s site and landed interests,

51

Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the PRO. Elizabeth I, volume IX, 1580-1582 (HMSO, 1986),

p.117; ERO Colchester Court Roll transcripts, roll 144, rot. 12d. For the abbey’s fishpond, see above, pp.20,

22. 52

ERO Colchester Court Roll transcrips, roll 145, rot. 4. 53

L.J. Wilkinson, Calendar of Patent Rolls 32 Elizabeth I (1589-1590) Part 1 (Calendar), List and Index

Society, Volume 301 (2004), no. 1267. 54

TNA, E 310/13/44, ff.8, 44. 55

Bourne Mill (National Trust Guidebook, 1986); J. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English

Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), pp.85; VCH Essex, ix, pp.303, 385-6.

26

the Lucas family also became heirs to the abbey’s longstanding conflicts with the

townspeople. These conflicts have been analysed in depth in John Walter’s monograph

Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers

(1999). Relationships had broken down by 1571 when Sir Thomas Lucas was removed as

the town’s Recorder after only a single year of office, and during the 1570s and 1580s

there were clashes over the powers of the Corporation, rating, jurisdiction, and enclosures

on St. John’s green which lay between the abbey and the town.56

Thomas Lucas wasted little time in improving or rebuilding his newly acquired asset, for

on the south gable wall is a panel with the following inscription: “Thomas Lucas / Miles /

me fecit anno domini 1591”. It is known that about this time the mill and its ponds had

achieved some wider repute as the herbalist John Gerard (1545-1612) mentioned the

property in his Herball saying:

“Marsh Cinkfoile groweth in a marsh ground adjoining the land called Bourne Ponds….

from whence I brought some plants for my garden, where they flourish and prosper

well.”

Presumably the mill and its pond had long provided an important environment for wild

plants and even perhaps for medicinal herbs, which could perhaps have been utilised in

the medieval period by the gardener or infirmarer of St. John’s abbey.57

As there is no evidence concerning the precise nature of the abbey’s former mill building,

it is uncertain whether Lucas’s new construction lay on the original mill site. A small

excavation in 1993 revealed a ‘previously unrecorded floor of stone and re-used Roman

tile’ beneath a 2.5 m. layer of dumped clay at the south-west corner of the building, which

might indicate an earlier phase of occupation.58

However, it is also possible that the

building constructed in 1591 was entirely new and separate from a mill building standing

elsewhere on the dam. This question cannot be resolved by cartographic sources, because 56

Walter, Understanding Popular Violence, pp.86-9. 57

J. Gerard, The Herball or General Historie of Plants (1597); Bourne Mill Interpretation Board. For an

example of the role of a monastic infirmarer see: B. Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540

(Oxford, 1999), pp.81-99. 58

Some 600 mm above the floor was a suspended square sectioned horizontal timber beam laid parallel to the

wall face. These, and other undated finds mentioned in the excavation report, suggest that considerable

archaeology may survive around the mill site: C. Crossan, ‘Bourne Watermill’ in P.J.Gilman, ed., ‘Archaeology

in Essex, 1993’, Essex Archaeology and History, Vol. 25 (1994), p.248.

27

no map depicting the location survives until 1777.59

It may only be definitely resolved by

further archaeological investigation or if new documentary sources come to light.

However, in the interim the issue can also be approached from consideration of the

purpose of the new building constructed by Lucas, whether it was originally intended as a

mill, or as a fishing lodge, or as a dual-purpose building. These questions may also be

related to the place of the mill within Sir Thomas Lucas’s reconstitution of the St. John’s

abbey estate, and an extended discussion of all these issues is reserved for the conclusion

to this report.60

59

Above, section 2, pp.8,10-11. 60

Below, section 8.

28

5 The mill in the 17th

and 18th

centuries

The first half of the 17th

century is the most poorly documented period for the history of

the mill, but it may also have been a key one. Both the National Trust guidebook and

Benham’s work on Essex mills state that Bourne mill was ‘acquired’ (presumably

meaning the lease) by Dutch refugees who turned it into a cloth or fulling mill associated

with the New Draperies, that is to say the manufacture of bays (otherwise baize, a type of

lighter woollen), which was a crucial aspect Colchester’s early modern trade and wealth.

The date of this activity is sometimes given as 1632, although Benham places it later

when the royalist Lucas family fortunes lay under a cloud. The original source for this

statement has not been cited, and the statement must be regarded as unproven until further

evidence is uncovered.61

Firmer information on the mill’s history derives from the first surviving estate account

book of the Lucas family. By this time the estate had passed from Sir Thomas Lucas to

Thomas Lucas the younger (d. 1625) and thence to his son John Lucas (d. 1671), created

Baron Lucas of Shenfield in 1645.62

The earliest accounts do not seem to record the mill,

but it does appear in the Lady Day and Michaelmas rents for 1646, 1647 and 1648. In

1646 Edward Edwick owed £18 rent to Sir John Lucas for Bourne mill, indicating a

yearly rent of £36. However, in 1647 and 1648 rather less rent seems to have been

actually received.63

The end of the accounts at this point may well be the result of the siege of Colchester in

the Second English Civil War (1648), the execution of John’s brother Charles Lucas as

one of the royalist commanders, and the final destruction of the Lucas house at St. John’s

abbey, Colchester. Despite these events, John Lucas evidently remained in ownership of

the property, possessing the “water mill called Bourne Mill with lands and meads called

Lakes Croft and Lakes Meadow” in 1651.64

61

Benham, Some Essex Water Mills, p.96. For Colchester bay production see: E. Kerridge, Textile

manufactures in early modern England (Manchester University Press, 1985), pp.89-113; VCH Essex, ii,

pp.386-404. 62

VCH Essex, ix, p.303. 63

Beds. RO, L26/1457. 64

Beds. RO, L17/84.

29

The Lucas estate, including Bourne mill, later descended to Mary, the only daughter and

heir of John Lucas. She married Anthony Grey, 11th

earl of Kent in 1668, and the

marriage settlement included Bourne mill, Cannock mill, Lakes meadow and

appurtenances.65

The documentary record then falters again for another half century

before an indenture of 11th

August 1730 in which their descendant, Henry, duke of Kent,

let Bourne mill and five small parcels of meadow and pasture comprising 9a. 1r. 27p. to

the miller George Scrivener of Colchester. The lease was for 12 years from Lady Day

1731 at £50 per annum and two pecks of oysters. Scrivener had to pay the parish rates,

window duty and half the land tax, and maintain the premises in “good and sufficient

repair”, for which he was allowed hedge and rough timber from the property.

No details are given in these leases as to the functioning and equipment of the mill, so it

is not possible to say whether it was operating as a corn or fulling mill. However,

Scrivener’s lease excepted rights over timber, minerals, hunting, and fishing, and in the

later case the landowner reserved “all the fish that now are or that shale hereafter be in all

or any of the streams, ponds or waters belonging to the said premises, and the sole right

and property of fishing therein”. This clause represents some further evidence that fishing

was identified as an important asset of the property, over and above the milling income.66

In March 1758 the lease to Scrivener was renewed for a further 21 years, the rent having

fallen to £40 and two pecks of oysters.67

On its expiry a new miller was found in Samuel

Wright, junior, miller, who signed a lease for 12 years at the same rent, from November

1778.68

This lease was renewed in 1790, when the rent was increased to £45.69

The accounts of Marchioness Grey, to whom the estate had descended, for the year to

Michaelmas 1792 record the economic value of the mill.70

In that year it was still leased

to Samuel Wright who paid £45 rent and 2 pecks of oysters. Against that had to be set the

following expenditure:

65

ERO, T/A 163/1. Lady Lucas Collection: Introduction; Beds. RO, L22/112 (17 Feb., 1662/63). 66

Beds. RO, L17/254. 67

Beds. RO, L17/255-6. 68

Beds. RO, L17/257. 69

Beds. RO, L17/258-9. 70

Beds. RO, L26/1464.

30

Half the Land Tax £1 16s. 0d. [the tenant paid the other

half]

By Bill for reeds for thatching £3 18s. 6d.

By Two Bills for Bricks £2 19s. 6d.

By Bill for ‘Terras’ £0 10s. 0d.

By Bill for Deals

By Bill for Logs for the Mill £0 7s. 0d.

[leaving:]

By Cash carried forward £34 19s. 5d.

Evidently expenditure was restricted in that year to minor repairs. Further examination of

the mill’s roof might reveal whether it was thatched, although the reeds could have been

for ancillary structures. While this snapshot might suggest that the mill was operating

profitably in the period, the comments of the estate’s surveyor in 1797-8 paint a rather

different picture:

“This mill is for the sole purpose of fulling baize, flannel, etc., the demand for which is, at

present, very small. The value of the mill will depend on the state of that Trade, when the

mill falls out of Lease. If trade should continue bad until, and at that time, it may be of

advantage to the Estate, to put a pair of low Millstones to grind corn, in the Mill. The

supply of water is not sufficient for stones of large diameter.”71

The surveyor made the same observation of Cannock mill, and it seems probable that

both had operated as fulling mills, possibly, as is commonly claimed, since the 17th

century. By the 1790s the bay trade was mired in difficulties and the number of baymkers

in Colchester had collapsed to just a few firms. The letterbook of one of the last

baymakers, Thomas Boggis (d. 1790) of the Minories, Colchester, survives for the period

(1772, 1790-91) and it reveals that Bourne mill was one of the mills he hired in

partnership with the Tabors, baymakers of Queen Street. His manager and partner, was

Peter Devall, snr., a cloth-sorter who later worked for his successor Isaac Boggis (d.

1801) and also on his own account after he bought a bankrupt business in 1786. In that

year Devall’s son, also called Peter, was apprenticed to Boggis and his father, and it was

71

Beds. RO, L26/976.

31

this Peter Devall, jnr., who was to play a prominent role in Bourne mill’s last years in the

fulling trade.72

6 The mill in the 19th

and earlier 20th

centuries

Ownership of Bourne mill continued to descend with the estate of the Earls de Grey.

Annabell Baroness Lucas (afterwards Countess de Grey) died without issue in 1833 and

the estate passed to Thomas Phillip Lord Grantham (afterwards Earl de Grey). He also

died without male issue in 1859 and the estate passed to his eldest daughter Anne

Florence Countess Cowper (d. 1880). She was succeeded by her eldest son Francis

Thomas de Grey, earl Cowper, who died in 1905 also without issue. He was succeeded by

his nephew Auberon Thomas Baron Lucas who also died without issue in 1916. It was

then inherited by his sister Nan Ino who sold the estate in the following year.73

Bourne mill depicted in a 19th

-century painting

Considerable information is available for the mill, its management and its millers during

this period. A full survey and valuation by John Wiggins of Danbury is preserved from

1809.74

At that date the mill was let to a Mrs Mary Wright (evidently the widow of

Samuel Wright, the miller in 1792), as a tenant at will paying £48 4s. and 2 pecks of

72

J. Bensusan-Butt, The House that Boggis Built (Colchester, c. 1972), pp. 10-11, 30-31; ERO, T/A

460/1. 73

Beds. RO, L23/729. Abstract of Title, 1917. 74

Beds. RO, L26/979.

32

oysters as rent. It was described as a small fulling mill which required repair, with a

comfortable dwelling house and small stable. The house may have been on the site of the

current mill cottage. The lands attached to the mill comprised 10 parcels totalling 16 a., as

shown on the table below.

Parcel No. Name Land use Size (a-r-p)* Comment

1 Garden & buildings - 0a. 1r. 34p.

2 Orchard with pond Meadow 0a. 2r. 31p.

3 Lower Mill Pond - 2a. 1r. 24p.

4 Upper Mill Pond - 0a. 3r. 25p.

5 Lower Rushy Piece meadow 0a. 2r. 30p. }chiefly coarse

6 Upper Rushy Piece meadow 0a. 2r. 23p. } & sedgy

7 Broom Hill pasture 1a. 3r. 22p. light sandy hill with

broom

8 Great Meadow meadow 2a. 3r. 30p. } low, wet

9 Little Meadow meadow 1a. 3r. 9p. } & coarse

10 Pettis Meadow pasture 3a. 2r. 12p. A poor sandy hill,

should be planted with

firs

Total 16a. 0r. 0p.

* acres, rods, and perches.

The surveyor added a comprehensive description of the mill, which contains some further

significant information:

“This Mill is situated about one mile from Colchester on the Mersey Road and was in full

employment during the prosperity of the woollen manufactory, on the decline of which it

became almost idle, but has somewhat revived since the Garrison was established in its

neighbourhood. It is well supplied with water from Nos. 3 and 4 which are good heads of

water, but want cleaning and embanking. They might be made valuable as Fish Ponds.

The land is neither good nor in a good state. No. 10 would pay better for planting than

33

anything else, as would also No. 7 but it may be wanted for a drying ground. Nos. 5 and 6

might be advantageously converted to Ozier ground.”

The whole was valued by the surveyor at £55 10s., of which the mill house and ponds

were worth £35. He also recommended that No. 10, Pettis meadow, on the western side of

the Mersea Road, be reserved (for planting) and that the lease should stipulate that the

lessee should improve the land.

The same survey included the neighbouring Cannock Mill, which had also remained part

of the de Grey estate, and its description further assists an understanding of the

arrangements at Bourne mill. In 1809 Cannock Mill was said to have had a “good

dwelling house with a fulling mill and small flour mill adjoining”. It also had a “Drying

Field” which was described as “a high Gravelly Bank very useful for drying the Baize

etc.” The surveyor reported that part of the original fulling mill had already been

converted into a Corn Mill, and both were fully employed serving the Garrison. The

report therefore provides some local evidence that both corn-milling and fulling could be

carried out within the same mill.75

Additionally, despite the uncertain economic

conditions of the time it had yet to become clear locally that fulling should be altogether

abandoned. The surveyor’s comments rather suggest that the immediate local demand

from the Colchester Barracks for cloth helped local mills continue in the fulling trade

which had otherwise become uneconomic in the region.

A further survey and map of the Countess of Grey’s estate survives from 1824 (map

reproduced overleaf). Parcels 215 to 223 represent the land attached to the mill, as

follows:

Parcel Number Name Land use Size (a-r-p) Value (rent)

215 Pettis Meadow Pasture 3a. 2r. 12p. £3 11s. 6d.

216 Upper Rushy Piece Sedge 0a. 2r. 23p.

217 Upper Mill Pond Water 0a. 3r. 25p

75

This was still the case in the 1820s when Cannock mill was both fulling cloth and grinding corn, and

a workman recorded that the two uses did not interfere with each other: Henry Laver, ‘The Last Days

of Bay-Making in Colchester’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, new series, x (1909),

p.50.

34

218 Broom Field Pasture 1a. 3r. 22p. £1 17s. 9d.

219 Lower Rushy Piece Sedge 0a. 2r. 36p.

220 Lower Mill Pond Water 2a. 1r. 24p.

221 Orchard Pasture 0a. 2r. 31p. 13s. 10d.

221a House, Mill etc. Garden 0a. 1r. 34p. £40 0s. 0d.

222 Great Meadow Meadow 2a. 3r. 30p. £4 8s. 1d.

223 Little Meadow Meadow 1a. 3r. 9p. £2 5s. 1d.

Total 16a. 1r. 6p. £52 16s. 3d.

The survey and plan (below) confirm that there were still two ponds, the main one and a

higher pond. As has already been noted, these ponds had dams on different levels and

must have always been physically and functionally separate (above, pp.12-13). To the

east as the leat ran away from the mill were the two meadows called Great and Little

Meadow. The whole comprised just over 16 acres and was valued at £52 16s. 3d.,

although three-quarters of that total was provided by the rent of the mill of £40.

The survey recorded that in 1824 the mill was “very respectably occupied by Mr De Valle

who uses it as a Cording and Spinning mill”. The house attached, however, was out of

repair and was occupied as three tenements. The land was again noted to be poor and of

little value, and the surveyor recommended planting 215 and 216 (presumably for

35

timber). Cannock mill was again included in the survey and there it was noted that it was

now entirely a flour mill “the fulling trade having ceased”.76

Considerable research has been published on the last days of the bay trade in Colchester.

That work has revealed that only two firms survived into the 19th

century, and by 1820

that of Peter Devall, jnr., was the only one still in business operating from premises at the

north end of Priory Street. He was evidently the same “Mr De Valle” who leased Bourne

mill to carry on cording and spinning. Devall apparently installed spinning machinery in

his Lexden and Bourne mills, experimenting with a new type of cloth and employing

nearly 200 people, mainly women, though his weavers still used hand-looms in their own

houses. In the last Directory in which he is mentioned (1832) Devall was described as a

baize, blanket and rowell yarn manufacturer of East Hill. He appears to have retired soon

afterwards and his son apparently abandoned the business, the machinery being sold to a

Yorkshire firm and several of the last weavers also moving north.77

Oral testimony concerning the nature of bay production and finishing at the mill in the

earlier 19th

century was collected and published by Henry Laver in 1900.78

One

interviewee, Mr William Potts, born in 1809, came to work at Bourne Pond mill around

1823 when he was fourteen. He was interviewed in Colchester workhouse in 1893 and

recalled some of the work undertaken for Peter Devall as follows:

“The raw material came to the mill, I believe, direct from the wool-stapler after he had

sorted it. It was first washed with soft soap, then partly dried, and next “hacked” by

passing it through two sets of rollers. The second set of rollers made it into “slivers”, and

from these the spinner worked, twisting it into yarn. A spinner could tend, I think, at least

twenty bobbins at once. The yarn, when spun, was sent from the mill to the warehouse in

Moor Lane (where Mr Devall lived) ready for use by the weavers; but of the process of

weaving I know nothing. The yarn was woven into cloth, this latter came back to Bourne

Pond Mill to be fulled and bleached. The drying-ground was on the slope overlooking the 76

Beds. RO, L26/981 (Survey); L26/982/1-2 (Map). An alternative version of the survey (Beds. RO,

L26/1473) gives the acreage as 16a. 0r. 0p. and the valuation as £53 4s. 9d. 77

Henry Laver, ‘The Last Days of Bay-Making in Colchester’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological

Society, new series, x (1909), pp.48, 51; VCH Essex, vol. ii, pp.403-04; J. Bensusan-Butt, The House that

Boggis Built (Colchester, c. 1972), p.34; A.F.J. Brown, Colchester 1815-1914 (1980), pp.7-8; A.F.J. Brown,

Essex at Work, 1700-1815 (1969), pp.1-27; Pigot’s Directory (1832), p.677; Essex Standard, 25th

March

1893. 78

Laver, ‘The Last Days of Bay-Making in Colchester’, pp.47-54.

36

pond where the plantation is now. Here were two parallel rails, the upper one being

fixed, while the lower one was moveable. After a long strip of bay was stretched and its

upper edge fastened to the hooks in the fixed upper rail, the hooks on the lower rail were

fixed in its lower edge, the weight of the lower rail tending to stretch the bay. So it

remained until it was completely dry.”

Charles Baker, another workhouse inmate, who as a boy had worked at the mill in 1826

when aged about nine, described the same process and then the spinning process:

“The raw wool came to the mill, sometimes in the fleece, sometimes from the stapler; but,

from where ever it came, it was passed first of all through the “hackler”, after which it

was oiled. The oiling was done by sprinkling large quantities of linseed oil over it. Next it

was threshed with flails, and then it was passed through another engine which made it up

into “locks” or “slivers”. These were, as near as I can recollect, about a yard long and

about as large as your finger. It then went into the gin to be spun into yarn. It was never

washed until the bay was woven.”

“The spinning was done by a man who walked backwards, drawing with him a frame

which moved on wheels running on rails. On it were a number of wheels and

spindles……The man, as he moved, turned a handle which drove all the spindles on the

machine (either 32 or 46 in number, I am not sure which) by means of cat-gut strings and

also moved the whole apparatus backwards as the threads were drawn out. The wool was

pieced on by boys as the threads were spun. After about five yards had been drawn

out……, the machine was pushed up again, the spun threads being wound on to the

spindles by the operation. When the spindles were full the yarn was slipped off them, and

the operation of spinning, as described above, was begin over again.”79

79

It has been noted that the spinning process described above perhaps relates to a “spinning Jenny”,

machinery invented in 1776 by James Hargreaves: L. Bloom, ‘The History of Bourne Mill and It’s

Significance in Colchester’s Cloth Industry’ (University of Essex, unpublished BA Project, 2003),

p.22.

37

“The spun yarn was sent from Bourne Mill Pond to the warehouse in Priory Street, where

the weaver took it in hand, but exactly what he did I cannot say. Spinks, who was a

weaver, will be able to tell you.”80

“After the wool was woven into bay, it came back to the Bourne Pond Mill to undergo

various finishing processes. Each “piece” of bay was two yards wide and fifty (thirty?)

yards long. The first of the finishing process was fulling, which was carried on thus: we

folded a “piece” of bay on the floor, so that it made a pile about a yard square; as we did

so, we sprinkled it with chamber-lye (urine). We then took other “pieces” and served

them in the same way, piling them up as high as we could reach, sprinkling them all the

time with the chamber-lye. We used to go round to the workhouses and other places to

collect chamber-lye, for which we paid a halfpenny a pail.”

“By the following morning, the pile of bays had heated. We then took them and put them

two or three pieces at a time, under the fulling-stocks - large wooden beams, worked by

the water-wheel of the mill - which rubbed them in a certain way, thus “fulling” or

“thicking” them. The rubbing process continued about half an hour, when a good stream

of water was turned on to the bays, to wash them.”

Baker added a few final details, such as that the finishing process turned the water very

foul (and white), and that after drying on the tenter frames (as described by Potts) the

bays were taken to a bleach house where they were exposed overnight to burning sulphur

fumes which turned them white. Finally a “nap” was raised on the surface of the cloth

with the heads of teasels, and then the bay was rolled up and packed for sale.81

It seems

likely that some of these processes required additional accommodation and this may

explain the brick extension(s) on the north side of the mill that were depicted in a 19th

-

century painting of the mill and which remained until their demolition in 1951.82

The precise date when Bourne mill followed Cannock mill’s example and ceased fulling

cloth remains unrecorded, although on evidence cited earlier it was probably in the mid

80

Laver also interviewed Spinks and his account of the weaving process is also available: Laver, ‘The

Last Days of Bay-Making in Colchester’, pp.51-2. 81

Laver, ‘The Last Days of Bay-Making in Colchester’, pp.49-51 for the full text of Baker’s extraordinary

interview. 82

Painting, above, p.31; demolition, below, p.54. For photograph showing brick extension, see below

p.52.

38

1830s. This was a county-wide pattern, with other fulling mills being converted to corn-

milling about that time, including the Abbey Mill, Coggeshall (1840), and Straits Mill,

Braintree (about 1846).83

The chronology seems largely supported by the evidence of

directories and the census, albeit with some amendment. There is no mention of any

baymaking or fulling business in White’s Directory of 1848. Cannock mill, which as we

know had been converted to corn milling by 1824, was recorded in the 1848 directory as

leased to Henry Digby, corn miller.84

Fifteen years later, in White’s Directory of 1863,

Digby was recorded at both Cannock mill and Bourne Pond mill. Although the evidence

is circumstantial, it seems quite probable that Digby had become tenant at both mills in

the 1840s. Bourne mill may therefore have switched over to corn milling rather earlier

than the date of 1860 that has generally been proposed.85

It may also be relevant that as

Bourne Mill was the upper mill on the stream its pond and sluice would have had to have

been properly maintained if Cannock mill downstream was to function properly.

Other evidence that milling probably continued in the 1840s comes from records of

occupation in the census. Peter Devall had not lived at Bourne mill, and so it is likely that

he sub-let the mill cottage, possibly to some of the workers employed in his bay-finishing

business. Similarly the later corn miller, Henry Digby, did not live on the site. He

evidently chose to dwell at Cannock mill which he occupied with his wife and seven

children and a servant on census night in 1871.86

Bourne mill, when operational, must

therefore have been run by millers employed by Digby and they were probably housed by

him either within the mill itself or in Bourne mill cottage(s).

83

P. Tritton, ‘Fulling mills’, Essex Mills Group Newsletter, No. 5 (October, 1986), p.18. 84

White’s Dir. Essex (1848), pp.96, 104. 85

White’s Dir. Essex (1863), p.114. The traditional date of 1860 may be based on architectural evidence

(such as the probable date of the lucum). 86

TNA, RG 10/1683.

39

Bourne Mill and cottages about 1856 (E.J. Rudsdale)

Although it is sometimes difficult to identify the mill with certainty in the census returns,

we can probably locate most of the people that lived on the site. Thus in 1841 under the

heading ‘Bourne Ponds’ were entered William Nevard (aged 25), miller, and George

Reads (20), miller’s apprentice. It is possible that they lived in the mill, for the two

following entries may represent mill cottage (perhaps then divided into two properties). In

the first dwelt John Polley (50), an agricultural labourer, Esther Polley (56), Robert

Nevard (20) and Nehemiah Nevard (19), both agricultural labourers, and in the second

John Walford (33), agricultural labourer, Charlott Walford (40), and Harriot Cawele (?)

(20+).87

By 1851 that the mill was being worked by William Brad…..[name

indecipherable], who lived there with his wife Salome and four children aged 10 to 16.

There were two empty properties adjacent, which may represent the mill cottages.88

The

mill and the cottages are depicted about this time in the photograph saved by E.J.

Rudsdale of Colchester Museum (previous page).

87

TNA, HO 107/344/5. 88

TNA, HO 107/1781.

40

By 1861 we are on firmer ground as the miller was evidently James Ashwell (aged 49).

Ashwell lived in one half of the mill cottages with his wife Mary Ann (47) who worked

as a dressmaker, their son Henry Ashwell (15) who worked as a bootmaker, and their

daughter Emma (10).89

The other half was occupied by an agricultural labourer, John

Moller (34), his wife Ann Eliza (34), and their three sons and two daughters aged 2 to

13.90

Ashwell was still miller in 1881, and perhaps until his death in 1888. His wife Mary

Ann lived until 1902 and their daughter Emma Ashwell (later Mrs Legerton) until 1952.

Photographs of James, Mary Ann and Emma passed down through the family and copies

are now preserved at Bourne Mill. Mrs Legerton recalled large fishing parties being held

at the mill and on one occasion an unusually fine pike was sent to Queen Victoria. She

also described the pond as a favoured spot for suicides and that she had once helped her

89

TNA, RG 10/1684. An annotation on a photograph at Bourne mill gives Emma’s Ashwell’s dates as 1860

to 1952. She would therefore have been 1 not 10 in 1861. In either case she was long-lived dying at the age

of either 92 or 102. 90

TNA, RG 10/1684.

41

father remove two bodies in one night.91

Towards the end of Ashwell’s life the mill was

reported to have been “considerably damaged” in the region’s famous earthquake of 1884

when “ornamental stone-work was thrown down, the gable-end of the mill shidfted about

two inches, and the mill much shattered”.92

It seems that the adjacent Mill House (i.e. mill

cottages) had to be demolished as they were beyond repair, and the current cottages are

probably a complete re-building of the late 19th

century.93

Digby remained the main lessee until 1878, probably at both Bourne and Cannock mills.94

He was evidently dead by 1890 when his widow Eliza Digby was the water miller at

Cannock Mill, and she was later recorded at both Cannock and Bourne mills in 1894.95

Who exactly undertook the milling work at Bourne mill in the 1880s is uncertain.

Benham states that both Bourne and Cannock mill were worked by Arthur Pulford from

1880, but this has not yet been confirmed, and if he did work the mills it must have been

as a sub-tenant first of Henry Digby and later of his widow, Eliza. However, Ashwell did

not die until 1888, and may have remained miller until then. A file of notes preserved at

Bourne Mill contains correspondence from a family historian suggest that the miller in

1887 was William Joseph Smith from Wormingford, but no supporting evidence has been

uncovered in this study.96

The Pulford family possibly became sub-tenant millers in the

1890s, or even in the 1880s, but the first certain evidence we have of their involvement is

a grant of the main mill tenancy to Arthur Pulford on 22nd

March 1897. He was described

in 1898 as a “miller (water and steam) and corn merchant” at Cannock and Bourne mills.

The grounds then extended to 15a. 2r. 22p. The rent had stayed virtually unchanged since

the early 18th

century at £50 p.a., with 6 months notice. The lessee undertook to keep the

premises in good repair and the landlord again reserved the timber, minerals and fishing

rights.97

The latter encompassed fishing “in the ponds for himself and his friends: but this

91

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, New leaflet draft; Bourne Mill, Greem Sources File retained at

mill including photocopy of letter from Mrs Madeline Greece re: Mrs Legerton; Funeral card of James

Ashwell (1821-1888) “For nearly 30 years Miller at Bourne Pond Mill, Colchester”. Bourne Mill, National

Trust Guidebook, 1986. 92

R. Meldola and W. White, Report on the East Anglian Earthquake of 1884 (Essex Field Club Special

Memoirs, Vol. 1, London, 1885), p.56. I am grateful to Andrew Phillips for this reference. 93

The neighbouring St. Giles rectory was also heavily damaged: Meldola and White, East Anglian

Earthquake of 1884, p.56. 94

Kelly’s Dir. Essex (1870,), p.72; (1878), p.86: only mentions ‘Cannock Mill’. 95

Kelly’s Dir. Essex (1890), p.119; (1894), p.125. 96

Benham, Some Essex Water Mills, p.97; Bourne Mill, Green Sources File. William J. Smith from

Wormingford lived in another part of Colchester in 1891: TNA, RG12, 1409. 97

Beds. RO, L23/462; Kelly’s Dir. Essex (1898), p.139.

42

reservation does not preclude the tenant from fishing himself in a fair and sportsmanlike

manner, but not to net or set night lines”.98

Bourne Ponds, looking west, on a card posted in 1908 (Author’s postcard collection).

A few years later, in the 1901 census, Arthur Pulford, like Digby before him, lived at

Cannock mill. Bourne Road mill, as it was then called, was occupied and worked by his

son Alfred Ernest Pulford (aged 31), corn miller, who lived there with his wife Rosa Ellen

(26) and sister-in-law Eliza Cooper (28).99

Perhaps the rent paid by the Pulfords proved

rather high as by 1906, when the mill was described as a “water flour and grist mill” in

the occupation of Arthur Pulford as tenant from year to year, the rent had fallen to £30.100

However, the Pulfords presumably made a reasonable living from their milling business

for c. 1917 the two mills were finally sold to Arthur Pulford by Nan Ino, Baroness Lucas,

for £1,000, with lands totalling 18a. 0r. 4p.101

98

Beds. RO, L23/462. 99

TNA, RG 13/1705, 1706. 100

Beds. RO, L26/1519. 101

Beds. RO, L23/726 List of sales n.d. [c. 1917?].

43

Bourne mill in 1923 (copyright English Heritage/NMR)

Arthur Pulford had probably retired from milling by 1922 when he was recorded as a

farmer of Old Heath Road, whilst his son Arthur Ernest was recorded as miller (water and

steam) at Cannock and Bourne mills. The local directories continue to record A.E.

Pulford as miller of both mills from 1926 to 1937.102

The first architectural analysis of the

mill took place in this inter-war period when it was included in the survey of Essex

monuments undertaken by the RCHME (1922). This probably stimulated local and

county interest in the history of the mill, for the Commission’s report not only identified

the gables of Lucas’s building as “elaborately treated in the Dutch manner” but also that

there was much re-used material in the walls that probably originated from St. John’s

abbey.103

A.E. Pulford continued to work Bourne mill until May 1935 when the shaft

broke and he regarded repair as uneconomic.104

In that year the last miller, David

Knights, reported that the mill “used to grind about twelve or fourteen cwt of meal a day,

102

Kelly’s Dir. Essex (1922), p. 182; (1926), p.192; (1929), p.174; (1933), p.180; (1937), p.186. 103

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England). An Inventory of the Historical Monuments

in Essex, volume 3 (1922), pp.71-3. See below, section 8, for further discussion of this point. 104

Colchester Gazette, Oct. 23, 1935; NT Central Archive, Box 101:12: Letter, n.d. (1935) L.S. Penrose,

Colchester Civic Society, to NT.

44

and she could run out a ton a day comfortably”. He also noted that the quality of meal

was dependent on the water supply and that two inches of water running through was

ideal. If there was more water the quality deteriorated.105

105

Colchester Gazette, Oct. 23, 1935.

45

7 The mill from 1935 to c. 1980

A.E. Pulford put the mill up for sale in 1935 and a copy of the Particulars has survived (see

overleaf). The sale notice drew the attention of the Colchester Civic Society and in

particular its secretary Lionel S. Penrose who proposed to raise funds for its purchase and

preservation. Sometime during 1935 Penrose evidently wrote to the National Trust

enquiring whether the mill was the type of property that it would accept as a gift.106

In a

circular correspondence, the Trust then contacted the Society for the Protection of Ancient

Buildings (SPAB) asking for advice, and SPAB in turn wrote to Penrose who had initiated

the correspondence.107

Penrose advised purchase and made suggestions as how the building

could be used, either as a Youth Hostel, or as a museum of agricultural implements, or

restored as a working water mill.108

The sale price of the whole property was £2,500 (or

£1,100 for just the mill itself), and it was advertised as “being suitable for conversion into

an interesting and valuable old residence or show place”. Donors were able to offer a total

of £1,500 towards the purchase and Penrose also advised the Trust that Pulford would

probably take less than the asking price.109

The mill cottage was also included in the sale,

and in the gardens were numerous apple, plum, greengage and other fruit trees, three double

pig-styes, a meal shed, and a timber and iron shed.110

The architect J.E.M. Macgregor, who was later to prepare plans for conversion of the

building, also visited the mill, on behalf of SPAB, in 1935. His report stated that the whole

structure was in “an exceedingly good state of preservation” and he noted that the whole of

the oak roof was in a perfect state and free from beetle. At this date the roof space was still

divided up into corn bins. He considered the mill machinery, mainly of cast iron, to be “of

no great interest”, an opinion that was, with hindsight, perhaps unfortunate. Macgregor

supported Penrose’s view that the National Trust should purchase the mill and, because the

original structure was so complete, he felt that the mill gearing and the “excrescence” of the

106

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Letter, n.d. (1935) L.S. Penrose, Colchester Civic Society, to NT. 107

SPAB Bourne mill file, Items 1 & 2: 18th

Sept., 19th

Sept., 1935. 108

SPAB Bourne mill file, Item 3: 20th

Sept., 1935. 109

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Letters, n.d. (1935), L.S. Penrose, Colchester Civic Society, to NT,

13/9/1935; 14/9/1935; 25/9/1935, 28/9/1935. See also: SPAB Bourne mill file, Item 4, p. 2. 110

SPAB Bourne mill file, Item 4.

46

lucum should be entirely removed and the building reinstated to its “original condition”.111

SPAB subsequently recommended that NT acquire the mill.112

Pulford, the owner, was evidently well-intentioned and also wished to preserve the mill’s

setting; he agreed, for example, to prevent the sale of neighbouring land for building

111

SPAB Bourne mill file, Items 5-7, 11; NT Eastern Regional Office, B185, J.E.M. Macgregor ‘Bourne

Mill. Colchester’, 4th

October 1935. 112

SPAB Bourne mill file, Item 12, 12th

Oct. 1935.

47

purposes. He also wished to continue milling if Bourne mill could pass to a new owner who

had the capital to repair the machinery. Penrose also favoured the continuation of

milling.113

The degree of repair required was estimated by John Bryant, Millwright and

Engineer of Abbeygate Street, Colchester, who had set up the machinery 56 years earlier

(i.e. c. 1879/80). When Bryant inspected the machinery he declared that it was in a

dangerous state, and commented that if it had been regularly inspected it would not have

broken down – an evident criticism of Pulford.114

Bryant seems to have requested further

advice, and this was provided via SPAB by Mr Rex Wailes of its watermills section.115

Undated postcard, but perhaps of the 1920s or 1930s, showing two of the ponies

responsible for the well-grazed dam (Author’s postcard collection)

Negotiations over the price and conditions of the lease dragged on through late 1935 and

the first half of 1936. They were perhaps smoothed by E.J. Rudsdale (d. 1951), then

Assistant Curator at Colchester Museum, whom Penrose put in touch with the Trust.

Rudsdale knew Pulford well, characterising him as “a most awkward man to deal with,

113

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Letter, 29/11/1935, L.S. Penrose, Colchester Civic Society to NT;

SPAB Bourne mill file, Item 14. 114

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Letters 29/11/1935, 10/12/1935, L.S. Penrose, Colchester Civic Society,

to NT. 115

SPAB Bourne mill file, Items 14, 15, 16.

48

especially being so deaf”.116

Rudsdale also grazed a pony on the paddock adjoining the

mill, and it was agreed this arrangement could continue under Trust ownership.117

In the

final agreement of 26th

August 1936 the Trust agreed to a price of £1,050, and to

undertaking the necessary repairs to the mill machinery estimated at £300, conditional upon

Pulford taking a lease of the property for seven years and keeping the mill in repair

henceforth. The vendor also agreed not to erect any houses on 2¼ a. of land adjoining the

mill to the south-east without the Trust’s consent.118

The National Trust was evidently

proud of its new acquisition, Bourne mill appearing in J. Dixon-Scott, England Under Trust

(1937). Dixon recorded that the mill was then in good condition, and that the machinery

was still in position but he also commented that it was of little interest being 19th

-century in

date 119

The building added to The National Trust’s fairly limited property portfolio in

Essex up to that date, including Eastbury House, Barking (acquired 1918), and Paycockes,

Coggeshall (acquired 1924).120

Subsequent to the purchase, the General Committee of the Colchester Civic Society was

appointed to manage the property.121

The Civic Society and the Trust soon had an early test

of the difficulties that might arise with the mill. In 1937 Colchester Town Council

determined on a Bourne Road Improvement Scheme that involved road widening at

expense of the Trust’s property, the cutting down of trees, and a reduction in the size of the

mill pond, a scheme characterised by Rudsdale as “the latest vandalism attempted in this

Royal and Ancient Town”.122

However, representations by The National Trust and by

Colchester Civic Society ultimately proved successful. On the back of a publicity campaign

in the East Anglian Daily Times and Essex County Standard the scheme was amended and

the Trust passed a small strip of land to the Borough on condition that the land was

preserved as an open space. This was achieved by a Deed of Dedication as a full transfer

116

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Letter, 28/09/1935, L.S. Penrose, Colchester Civic Society, to NT; ERO

transcript of E.J. Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 26 April, 1938. 117

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, letter 14/09/1936. 118

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, correspondence, December 1935 to June 1936, passim; NT Central

Archive, Box 128:28, memorandum (concerning purchase) 20th

Sept. 1948. 119

England Under Trust. the Principal Properties held by the National Trust in England and Wales

described and illustrated by J. Dixon-Scott (London, 1937), pp. 45-9. 120

P.M. Ireland. ‘The National Trust in Essex’, Essex Countryside, Vol. 5, no. 17 (1956), pp. 14-15. 121

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, letter from Colchester Civic Society to NT, 23/11/1936; Colchester

Civic Society, Fourth Annual Report, March 1937. 122

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, correspondence NT to Colchester Civic Society, 24/06/1937; Rudsdale

to NT, 29/06/1937. See also ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 21 July, 1937.

49

could not legally be undertaken.123

The only other problem before the Second World War

occurred in 1938 when a contractor felling willows at Bourne Pond in 1938 knocked off

one of the decorative stone pinnacles; it was reconstructed in the following year.124

The National Trust was probably unfortunate to acquire the mill just before the outbreak of

war. An attempt to persuade Colchester Corporation Museum Committee to manage the site

was rejected in summer of 1940.125

The Corporation’s Parks Committee took on the

maintenance of trees and the grounds on behalf of Colchester Civic Society, but the pond

and the mill deteriorated and were in a “terrible condition” by December 1940.126

In May

1940 Christopher Gibbs, NT Deputy Chief Agent but at that time an artillery officer

stationed at Clacton, reported minor damage. Later that month Rudsdale reported the

smashing of window panes, graffiti and other vandalism and the use of the grounds and

pond as a garbage dump. Rudsdale identified the problems that were to plague the

management of the property for the next half century: it lay in the heart of a “poor class

residential district, near the Barracks, and a public footpath running through it”. It was thus

an open target for both hooligans and schoolchildren and complaints to police and parents

(evidently by Rudsdale) were to little avail.127

In July 1943 Rudsdale chased some boys

away and on threatening one boy’s mother with taking him to the police station if he were

to be caught again received the reply “Damn good job, then I’ll be rid o’ the little

bugger”.128

The military were also responsible for some wartime damage. In December

1941 the mill was broken open by Canadian soldiers acting under orders to hold the

position and search for “parachute-troops”.129

In November 1943 Rudsdale reported that

troops of our “Colonial Allies” frequented the site after pay-day and left litter in form of

beer and whiskey bottles, packets of fish and chips as well as having “a great passion for

bananas”.130

123

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, correspondence, July to December 1937, passim. 124

ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 27 December, 1938; 3 January, 1939, and picture. 125

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, NT minutes 19th

June, 1940; letter E.J. Rudsdale to NT, July 23rd

1940;

ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 16th

July, 1940. 126

ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 21st November, 1940; 3

rd December, 1940; Colchester

Paths and Bathing Places Committee, 1936-42, 14th

October 1940. 127

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, letters, Major C.J. Gibbs to NT, May 9th

1940; Rudsdale to NT, May

18th

1940. 128

ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 16 July, 1943. 129

ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 6 Dec., 1941. 130

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, E.J. Rudsdale to NT, 21st Nov., 1940.

50

Photograph of the mill from the south taken by Duncan Clark in 1943 showing the still

relatively open surroundings presumably due to grazing (copyright English

Heritage/NMR).

It gradually became clear during the war years that the Colchester Civic Society had

become “practically dead” and there was little chance of its revival after the war. In 1943

the remaining funds of the Society, comprising £52 2s. 1d., were made over to The National

Trust for the maintenance of Bourne mill.131

Although Pulford asked for an extension to his

seven-year lease in September 1943, the Trust seems to have already determined upon

converting and letting the house as a domestic residence, possibly because of the

management problems recounted above. The architect Marshall Sisson of Dedham had

been asked to draw up plans for the conversion and it is clear he envisaged the removal of

all the machinery, a plan that disgusted Rudsdale. The policy seemed to be confirmed when

suitable tenants, Dr and Mrs Gosse of Trinity College, Cambridge, approached the Trust in

October 1943.132

By November Gosse had been offered a 21 year lease at £10 a year,

subject to a condition that after the war the Trust would commit £700 to the mill’s

residential conversion.133

The Gosse’s move to the mill was delayed, as they were waiting for it to be converted, and

as Pulford moved out in June 1944 it again became exposed to damage. J.R. Gibbons of 131

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Rudsdale to Trust, 25th

Nov., 1942; correspondence 31st May 1943. A

further balance of £35 was paid over in 1950: NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 2nd

Sept., 1950. 132

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Mrs Gosse to NT, 20th

Oct., 1943; Deputy Chief Agent, NT, to Mrs

Gosse, 23rd

Oct., 1943; ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 11th

April, 12th

May, 22nd

June,

1943. 133

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, NT to P. Gosse, 9th

Nov., 1943.

51

Mill House, Bourne Road, who ran a small haulage contracting business, agreed to keep an

eye on the site in return for some grazing, and Rudsdale also continued to visit the site and

rented further grazing.134

The plans for conversion collapsed in April 1947 when Dr Gosse

decided to terminate his lease with 3 months notice because the Trust had failed to convert

the mill into a house sufficiently speedily after the war’s end. Apparently the obligation had

proved impossible given the general demand for building labour and materials after the

war. Marshall Sisson thought this was just as well as the estimated conversion cost had by

then risen to £1,630.135

Gibbons and Rudsdale continued to protect the site as much as they could. In 1949 Gibbons

paid £10 8s. p.a. for about 2 a. of grazing and held the keys to the mill.136

Rudsdale asked in

April 1949 whether he could become the tenant of the mill at £10 a year, as he wished to

use the building to store surplus books, but he later moved and became curator of Wisbech

Museum.137

The relationship with Gibbons sometimes proved difficult,138

but even after

new tenants were found for the property he continued to look after it when they were absent

and held the keys.139

In the aftermath of Gosse’s withdrawal, Colchester Town Council enquired whether their

Museum Committee might take over the mill, an approach probably encouraged by

Rudsdale. The National Trust decided to offer the Council the mill on a 7 or 14 year

lease.140

This proposal was adopted even though a serious private enquiry had been

received from Major S.E.G. Ponder, a retired army officer, who offered to pay for some of

the conversion and renovations himself.141

After some protracted negotiations over the size

of the nominal lease payment, agreement with Colchester Borough seemed to have been

reached and in November 1947 the local press reported that the mill was to be leased to the

134

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, NT to Gosse, 24th

Feb., 1944; Gosse to NT, 16th

April, 1944. 135

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, Gosse to NT, 5th

April, 1947; NT to Gosse 14th

April, 1947; Marshall

Sisson to NT, 16th

April, 1947; 2nd

May, 1947. 136

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 12th April, 1949.

137 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 2

nd April, 1949, 23

rd Feb., 1950.

138 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 20

th June, 1950.

139 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 26

th Sept., 1952.

140 NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, NT Committee Minutes 9

th July, 1947; letter, NT to Colchester Council,

30th

July, 1947. 141

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Ponder to NT, 29th

Aug., 1947.

52

Borough Council as a museum of agricultural exhibits and that the machinery would be

repaired.142

Bourne mill in 1947. The photograph shows the brick extension on the north that was

removed in 1951 (copyright English Heritage/NMR).

These reports proved over-optimistic as subsequent negotiations over the lease proved

abortive, the sticking point being the cost of putting the mill and pond into good order in

the context of the financial stringencies then affecting local government. Eventually, in

June 1948, the Trust broke off negotiations.143

Further talks took place in April 1949 but

these too failed,144

and Rudsdale later commented that the Corporation did not take the

lease because they considered the Trust’s terms “very harsh”.145

Throughout this period the

mill stood empty and very vulnerable. J.R. Gibbons reported nuisance and damage caused

by local children to the property,146

and in February 1948 some school boys were sent to an

Approved School for breaking into the mill.147

142

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, correspondence between NT and Colchester Council, Sept. to Nov.,

1947, passim; Ipswich Evening Star, 15th

Dec., 1947; Evening Standard, 3rd

Sept., 1947; East Anglian Daily

Times, 26th

June, 1947; SPAB Bourne Mill file, Items 18, 19. 143

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, correspondence NT and Colchester Council, March to April 1948;

passim; ‘Note’ on file concerning negotiations, 15th

June, 1948. 144

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 5th

April, 12th

April, 1949. 145

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 23rd

Feb., 1950. 146

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, J.R. Gibbons to NT, 11th

Jan., 1948, 23rd

March, 1948. 147

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 5th

April, 1949.

53

The National Trust were therefore back to square one. On 1st September 1948 C.V. Wallace

(Regional Secretary) wrote to Nicolas de Bazille Corbin (Eastern Area Agent) setting out

the essence of the problem. The Ministry of Works and local opinion was against removing

the machinery, and the structure did not seem worth converting to a residence anyway

because “of the council house development which has now engulfed the area during the last

18 months”.148

The new residents evidently complained about the “filthy state of the pond”,

but this did not elicit much sympathy from Corbin,149

who on another occasion in 1956

described the council estate as ruining the view from the road across the mill pond. There

can be little doubt that there was a considerable gulf of understanding between the Trust’s

regional management and the local community in this period.150

The delays in determining

a future for the mill house apparently had some dire consequences for the building. By

1950 the mill looked awful and derelict, the roof needed attention and there was active

beetle infestation in the woodwork.151

At this juncture both Essex County Council and

Colchester Borough Council each agreed to contribute £100 towards repairs.152

The realisation that negotiations with Colchester had failed persuaded the Deputy Chief

agent to contact Major Ponder in November 1950 to enquire whether he was still interested.

Ponder replied immediately in the affirmative stating that, as he was single and used to the

simple life, he only wished for some repairs and improvements which he himself could

afford. The National Trust officers were slightly bewildered by Ponder’s attitude, but he

seemed a reasonable prospect as a tenant because of his background and financial

position.153

Ponder had retired from the Indian army and had since worked as a popular

author. In 1951 it was reported that his novel “Rose of Hindustan” had sold 50,000 copies,

and he had just published his fifteenth book, “Twilight Cottage”, a humorous ghost story.

He was also a keen gardener.154

His references described him as having “an ingenious flair

for converting old buildings at small cost”, and “adequate private means” as well as being

“a keen antiquarian”.155

148

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 1st Sept., 1948.

149 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 15

th Aug., 1950.

150 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 16

th July, 1956.

151 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 4

th Aug., 15

th Aug., 1950.

152 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 20th June 1950; 15

th Aug., 1950.

153 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 27

th, 28

th and 29

th Nov., 1950.

154 SPAB Bourne Mill file, Item 21; Essex County Standard, 2

nd March, 1951.

155 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 13

th December, 1950.

54

In 1951 the National Trust finally decided to proceed with conversion of the mill to a

private residence, some 15 years after acquiring the building. Ponder was prepared to pay

the large rent of £75 p.a., which the Trust’s officers realised was unlikely to be achieved in

any other way. In return Ponder successfully demanded that the public should only be

admitted with a prior appointment upon written application, and that he should be able to

remove the “hideous” sheds against the north wall of the building. The sheds, in reality an

18th

or 19th

-century brick single storey extension perhaps associated with some of the earlier

bay-making or spinning processes, were subsequently demolished.156

The Trust also agreed to undertake large-scale capital expenditure on the mill, recorded as

£994 in March 1951 (of which £626 was allocated from the Peckover Fund). The sum

allowed conversion of the mill to a simple dwelling. A bath, lavatory and sink were

installed and connected to the main sewer, and electric light and a telephone were also

provided.157

Otherwise the mill was left alone, the Essex County Standard reporting that

“the machinery which runs through the entire building will be left as it is”. Photographs of

Ponder’s accommodation reveal how he furnished his new home, with “curios and treasures

of the East” (see picture overleaf).158

At about this time Bourne mill was listed Grade I and

described as “an exceptional building and very picturesque”. A note was added to the list to

the effect that the interior had been converted into a dwelling house, but that it retained the

mill machinery including “3 great grindstones and the water wheel”.159

156

NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 29th Nov., 1950; 16

th Jan., 30

th Jan., 1951.

157 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 8

th May, 1951; NT Finance Committee minutes, March 16

th, 1951.

158 SPAB Bourne mill file, Items 21, 23; Essex County Standard, 2

nd March, 1951; East Anglian Daily Times,

5th

Sept., 1952. 159

ECC, Essex Historic Environment, DEX12909; DoE List of Buildings, Borough of Colchester (1971):

Bourne Road, Bourne Mill (24/2/1950). Presumably note added later.

55

The maintenance costs to the Trust, other than the conversion that took place in 1951, do

not appear to have been especially high in this period:160

1949 £23 6s. 9d.

1950 £77 8s. 3d.

1951 £984 14s. 10d.

1952 £69 1s. 8d.

1953 £61 14s. 10d.

1954 £28 2s. 0d.

1955 £20 7s. 6d.

However, the period of relative stability did not last long. In March 1953 Ponder wrote to

the National Trust, apparently quite out of the blue, stating that his capital was shrinking

and that he could only stay at the mill if his rent were to be reduced.161

This rather sudden

change of financial circumstances is all that emerges from the main National Trust

correspondence files concerning the termination of Ponder’s lease, but a later internal report

160

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence, 4th March, 10

th March, 1956.

161 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 11

th March, 1953.

56

for the Trust reveals that he was released from his tenancy because of other personal

reasons.162

Meanwhile, sometime during Ponder’s tenancy the mill had presumably been

visited by Nikolaus Pevsner or one of his assistants. Pevsner included Bourne mill, “a

delightful piece of late Elizabethan playfulness” which he considered as probably “a fishing

lodge”, in his guide to Essex buildings published in 1954.163

By the 2nd

of February 1955 Ponder had moved on and the new tenants were Major G.F.C.

Herniman, a retired officer from the Royal Corps of Signals, and his wife.164

The following

February Bourne Pond froze over and children from all over Colchester came to play on the

ice. The Hernimans complained about vandalism by the children and The National Trust

liaised with the local Police to try to contain the problem. The offenders were not identified

but a large number of local children were warned not to trespass.165

Herniman apparently

had less capital than Ponder and already by May 1956 he was in arrears of rent. Mrs

Herniman had also fallen ill and the interior of the mill had become “shabby” and “filthy”

due to smoke from the fireplace. Ponder’s gardens had quickly become overgrown and

returned to wilderness, and no money had been received from the collecting box or from

the sale of leaflets.166

On the 25th

of May 1956 the National Trust’s solicitors threatened

proceedings against Herniman to recover the rent arrears and failure to match other

obligations in the lease, but he was subsequently given until the 30th

of June to pay.167

The

leaflet and box money was paid, but not the rent, and proceedings were brought in July

1956.168

It was then discovered that Herniman was so poor that only £5 a month might be

recovered, and he was allowed to stay after paying some arrears. Yet further arrears slowly

accumulated and the situation was described as “extremely unsatisfactory” in June 1957.169

Herniman eventually let it be known that he was willing to leave if alternative

162

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, correspondence, 1966-1974, ‘Note for DM’, 16th

March, 1970. 163

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Essex (Penguin, 1954). 164

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 2nd

Feb. 1955; NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187,

correspondence 1966-1974, ‘Note for DM’, 16th

March, 1970. 165

NT Eastern Regional Archives, letter from N. de Bazille Corbin to Colchester Police, 24th

Feb., 1956; NT

Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, letters 24th

Feb., 2nd

March, 1956. 166

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence, 3 May, 18th

May, 24th

May, 1956. 167

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence, 25th

May, 28th

May, 1st June, 1956.

168 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence, 30

th June, 9

th July, 16

th July, 20

th July, 1956.

169 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, letter 7

th Aug., 1956; correspondence Nov. 1956. to June 1957,

passim.

57

accommodation could be found.170

The Hernimans were rejected from the local housing list

by the Borough Council in September and were finally evicted in late October 1957.171

The Trust was therefore faced yet again with the problem of finding a new tenant. Corbin,

the Eastern Regional Agent, in contemplating yet another tenant, concluded “a bit of a

crank it will have to be, as no completely sane person would live there”.172

In December

1957 the Trust was approached by John Bensusan-Butt of the Minories, Colchester, an

artist, who would consider the living in the mill but only if it were properly converted to a

house (at his own expense) and the mill machinery scrapped, a solution that found favour

with Corbin.173

He deployed the argument that as “the Mill was built either as a little

Pavilion or a Fishing temple ….. the removal of the machinery would restore the building

nearer to its former state”. However, Christopher Gibbs (Deputy Chief Agent) and Robin

Romily Fedden (Secretary Historic Buildings Committee) at The National Trust Head

Office were more cautious and decided to confer with Lord Euston and Marshall Sisson,

and preferably obtain in advance the approval of The National Trust Historic Buildings

Committee and Rex Wailes of the Wind and Watermill section of SPAB.174

The initial replies in early 1958 were not what the Trust’s officers had hoped for. Wailes

evidently recommended retention of the mill’s equipment because it was of great interest

“illustrating a phase in the history of the development of machinery in watermills”. In

addition SPAB felt that “without the machinery the building is meaningless and that a mill

in the possession of the Trust should be maintained complete”. Action was therefore

deferred but eventually the Trust pressed on largely because of the financial and managerial

circumstances.175

Subsequently the Trust invited Mr Stowers from the Science Museum to

survey the mill.176

Stowers initially seemed to have agreed with Wailes, that “to remove the

machinery would destroy the character and historical value of the present building”.

However, the opposite view eventually prevailed, with Stowers agreeing that the machinery

could be removed so that the building could be made into a reasonable dwelling.177

170

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 13th

June, 27th

June, 1957. 171

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 20th

Sept., 27th

Sept., 2nd

Oct., 1957. 172

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 13th

June 1957. 173

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 2nd

Dec., 21st Dec., 1957.

174 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 30

th Dec. 1957, 23

rd Jan., 7

th Feb., April 9

th, 1958; SPAB Bourne

Mill file, Item 27 (11th

Feb., 1958). 175

SPAB Bourne Mill file, Items 29 to 31 (Feb., 1958). 176

SPAB Bourne Mill file, items 32, 34. 177

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 2nd June, 1958.

58

Off the record it seems that both SPAB officers and the Science Museum staff were

persuaded because of the deterioration of the building. Conversion was accepted as long as

the architect’s plans were overseen and that measured drawings were made of the

machinery, and some pieces preserved in situ.178

The items listed for preservation were as

follows: “The waterwheel and its iron axle, the semicircular iron bracket with footstep

bearing, the 10ft. diameter pit-wheel, the 3’ 6” diameter bevel wheel, the main vertical

octagonal wooden shaft (about 18” broad), the gearing and the 3 pairs of millstones in the

hurst”. 179

While the mill lay empty in early 1958 there was further vandalism, with glass broken at

the mill, the paled fence gradually destroyed, and cruelty to swans.180

Intruders caught in

May 1958 proved to be boys from the nearby housing estate, and The National Trust

elicited the support of the local education authorities and head-teachers to warn pupils

away.181

However, substantial damage was done by small boys, the grounds reverted to

wilderness and the pond became filled with “old iron”.182

By April and May 1958 Corbin, who had to deal with difficult management of property,

together with Fedden, appears to have become the main driving force for conversion and

removal of the machinery.183

The Trust’s preference was now for (a) removal and

preservation of machinery at a museum (b) boxing in of the machinery behind perspex (c)

the scrapping of the machinery.184

An approach was made to Colchester Museum on 23rd

June 1958, saying that, the agreement of SPAB for the removal of everything on the upper

floor having been obtained, the Trust would like to offer the building on permanent loan.

However, the Museum committee declined, which removed the favoured solution.185

By

August 1958 J.E.M. Macgregor was appointed architect to renew the plans for a conversion

that he had originally drawn up in 1936.186

Macgregor himself thought the proposed

178

SPAB Bourne Mill file, items 48-53 incl. Stowers to SPAB, June 1st, 1958.

179 SPAB Bourne Mill file, item 48. Stowers to SPAB, June 1

st, 1958.

180 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence, Jan. to April, 1958.

181 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 3

rd May, 19

th, 24

th, 11

th June, 1958; SPAB Bourne Mill file, items

43, 45 (May 1958). 182

SPAB Bourne Mill file, Item 40. 183

SPAB Bourne Mill file, items 44, 46, 47. 184

SPAB Bourne Mill file, item 41 (11th

April, 1958). 185

SPAB Bourne Mill file, item 53, 55. 186

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, letters 9th

Aug., 15th

Aug.; SPAB Bourne Mill file, items 56 to 58

(Aug., 1958).

59

conversion as “a pity”. His report concluded that to convert the mill to a five bedroom

house would cost in the region of £6,000-£6,500. The National Trust’s Regional Secretary,

Charles Wallace, felt there was no prospect chance of such a sum being allocated.187

Meanwhile in 1959 a full measured survey of the machinery was undertaken by Frank

Larkman of Norwich for the SPAB.188

The difficulties of finding a tenant without the removal of the machinery created

considerable correspondence, but despite a number of prospective tenants coming forward

during 1958 none proved willing to take on a lease.189

The problem finally seemed to be

solved in early 1959 when the Trust was approached by Jacqueline Palmer, a teacher in her

mid-thirties who was looking for a building “not too civilised” to act as a Field Centre. She

worked for London County Council’s Education Department promoting the study of nature

among the young in both schools and in leisure time, and her field club for about 25-40

children needed a permanent base. She seemed an ideal tenant as her work was “directed

against that sort of activity” (i.e. hooliganism) identified as such a problem at the property,

and also because the National Trust baulked at the full cost of conversion to a house.

Initially Palmer looked favourably on the nearby housing estates from which she hoped to

attract young people:

“Until they understand that each individual has a part in looking after the neighbourhood

there will always be damage and vandalism. I think I could answer this problem at Bourne

Mill”.190

Negotiations again proved lengthy, and there were many other enquiries, but Palmer

became tenant in June 1959.191

In the wake of the new tenancy, The National Trust had

apparently removed substantial elements of the machinery by September 1959.192

An article

on Palmer’s activities appeared in the London paper The Star in September 1960,

describing the use of the mill for her Junior Naturalists’ Club, for children aged 9-15. The

Council for Nature stated that “when Miss Palmer first rented Bourne Mill, local children 187

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 1st Dec., 3

rd Dec., 1958; SPAB Bourne Mill file, item 62 (15

th

Aug., 1958). 188

SPAB Bourne Mill file, items 65 to 83 Dec. 1958 to July 1959. 189

SPAB Bourne Mill file, Items 40, 42, 43, 44. 190

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence Jan. and Feb., 1959; NT Eastern Regional Office,

Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, ‘Note for DM’, 16th

March, 1970. 191

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence April and May 1959. 192

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 23rd

Sept., 1959.

60

were hostile, breaking windows and robbing swans nests. But by catching them at it and

making them do some tasks with her she won them over. Now these children form the

nucleus of the Junior Naturalists’ Club”.193

Tackling the “marauding gangs” of children was

evidently no easy matter. It occupied much of the new tenant’s time, although she did

report some success in getting young hooligans to return and help undertake work on the

gardens.194

However, the problems persisted and in September 1960 Palmer reported that

she had visited parents in an attempt to stop children damaging fences and doors.195

Sadly,

Palmer fell ill during 1960, required a hospital operation, ceased work towards the end of

that year, and died on the 3rd

of January 1961.196

New tenants were soon found in the form of a Mr and Mrs Adolf Langfier who by the 1st of

February 1961 had agreed to take the mill at an increased rent of £75 p.a. (compared to

Palmer’s £25). The elderly Mr Langfier had formerly been employed by The National Trust

as custodian of the Peckover Rooms at Wisbech.197

Langfier spent a good deal of his own

money on the mill, partitioning off the upper floor so that the lavatory and bathroom were

separate from the bedrooms.198

If not already removed during Palmer’s tenancy, the

remaining mill machinery and grindstones may have been taken out at this point, for later

(in 1968) it was recalled that before the Langfiers “as one entered the front door there was a

huge block of cogwheels and millstones all encased in wood in front of one. The removal of

all this has increased the living space”.199

Mr Langfier did not enjoy the property for very

long, as he fell ill and died in September 1961.200

Mrs Langfier stayed on and was issued

with a new lease from the 25th

of March 1961.201

In 1964 the Trust succeeded in getting her

rates lowered by an appeal to the District Valuer, citing the problems faced by their tenant

who could not risk going away on holiday because children from the neighbouring housing

193

SPAB Bourne Mill file, item 85 (The Star, 11th

Sept., 1960). 194

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 23rd

Sept., 17th

Nov., 31st Dec., 1959; NT Eastern Regional

Office, Box B186, Correspondence file, 6th

March, 1960. 195

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186, Correspondence file, 12th

Sept., 1960. 196

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186, Correspondence file, 1st Oct., 1960, 9

th Jan., 1961; NT Eastern

Regional Office, Box B186, Correspondence file, memorandum, 15th

Feb., 1961. 197

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186, Correspondence file, 1st Feb., 1961; NT Eastern Regional Office,

Manila file, Bourne Mill Rates 1956-1965. 198

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, ‘Note for DM’, 16th

March, 1970. 199

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, 18th

Dec., 1968; NT Eastern

Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, ‘Note for DM’, 16th

March, 1970. 200

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 25 May, 25th

Aug., 7th

Sept., 1961. 201

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186, Manila file, Bourne Mill Rates 1956-1965.

61

estate immediately used the mill grounds as a playground, causing damage and throwing

things into the pond.202

Mrs Langfier stayed until March 1964.203

The National Trust Regional Secretary then wrote

to the Vice-Chancellor of the new University of Essex in case he would be interested in the

property but nothing came of that proposal.204

In June 1964 two candidates were

interviewed, and the application of Peter Watts was successful. The new lease and tenancy

was to run from the 15th

of August 1964 for 14 years at £125 p.a., and Watts agreed to keep

a visitors’ book and sell Guide books and postcards and to allow the public access upon

application.205

Watts was the first tenant to own a car and therefore a garage was built in

1967.206

A renewed improvement campaign then took place on the house and gardens. A

botanical report was followed by advice from the head gardener at Ickworth. Inspection by

Rentokil Laboratories Ltd revealed infestation by both common furniture beetle and death

watch beetle, as well as attacks by wet and dry rot fungi due to lack of ventilation.207

Ickworth woodmen tidied up the grounds and dealt with fallen trees while Ickworth

gardeners remade the little garden outside front door and that facing across the pond.208

In

1969 a United Nations International voluntary team, including people from Belgium,

Bulgaria, Germany, France, Nepal and Czechoslovakia, helped Colchester Civic Society

transform 25 a. of wilderness around Cannock mill as part of idea to create a leisure park

between Cannock and Bourne mills.209

Peter Watts remained tenant until 15th

August 1971 when a new tenancy was negotiated

with a Mr Andrew Dodds for rent of £175 p.a., the tenant responsible for repairs from

vandalism. Dodds had his own house in Colchester and therefore The National Trust

insisted that he be responsible for repairing such damage. Dodds persuaded the Trust that it

could serve as his artist’s studio, where he could make and exhibit prints, drawings and

pottery, and where he could also sell his artwork. In 1973 he became a member of staff at

Ipswich Art College. The intended opening hours were Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday

202

NR Eastern Regional Office, Box B186, Manila file, Bourne Mill Rates 1956-1965. 203

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 24th

March, 1964. 204

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 20th

April, 1964; NT Eastern Regional

Office, Box B186, Manila file, ‘Bourne Mill Tenancys’ 1964-72. 205

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 3rd

June, 1964. 206

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, 9th

Aug., 1966; 25th Oct., 1967.

207 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, 7

th June, 1966; 26

th April, 1967.

208 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, ‘Note for DM’, 16

th March, 1970.

209 Colchester Gazette, 22

nd July, 1969.

62

and Sunday afternoons, 2-6pm, from Easter Sunday (or the 1st April whichever was earlier)

until the second Sunday in October. The mill would also be open by appointment in the

winter months. The National Trust hoped that the new access arrangements would mean

that the mill “is better appreciated by the public and our members”.210

However, evidence

from the visitors’ books recorded by Dodds suggests that there were relatively few visitors

during the 1970s. For example, the mill was open on 14 days in April, May and June 1974

when there were just 17 visitors.211

At first Dodds seems to have experienced little trouble from teenage vandals and in August

1972 he commented in a letter to the Trust that he could “only think that the delights of the

permissive society must be completely absorbing them”. Most problems involved the 6-12

age group and he suggested posting admission charges to deter them.212

Like Watts, Dodds

stayed for nearly a decade. Just before he left in 1979 he wrote to the Trust concerning

vandalism by a gang of boys aged 16-19 and complained that the police were of little help

and that the repairs had been expensive. He concluded by saying that “if it continues like

this, I think the long term prospect for Bourne Mill is very gloomy”.213

Certainly during the 1970s maintenance of the mill building and grounds proved quite

expensive to The National Trust as well as to the tenant. Repairs amounting to £1,200 were

made in 1972. The dredging of the pond in 1974/5 was expected to cost £2,000, and

building repairs to stonework and to the mill wheel works c. £5,000 in the same period.214

Dodds himself raised £1,500 towards this restoration work.215

In 1974 Rex Wailes of SPAB

mills section was again invited to report on the mill and what was left of the machinery. He

reported on the possibilities of getting the mill wheel turning again, which he estimated at

£3,000, and he personally felt that the expense was not justified. However, he was clearly

disappointed that so much of the machinery and the stones should have been “unnecessarily

scrapped”. Wailes had been involved in the original repairs in 1936 and felt that if the

210

NR Eastern Regional Office, Box B186, Manila file, ‘Bourne mill Tenancys’, 1964-72; NT Eastern

Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974. [N.B. It is probable that Andrew Dodds was the

father of the well-known local artist James Dodds of Wivenhoe, who may have recollections of the mill]. 211

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, 22nd

July, 1974. 212

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, 20th

Aug., 1972. 213

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B190, Correspondence 1978-1992, 7th

July, 1979. 214

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Correspondence 1966-1974, Report to Executive Committee, 29th

Dec., 1972, correspondence, 16th

Aug., 23rd

Dec., 1974; Box B188 Correspondence, 1975-1979; Manila file

Bourne Mill Repairs 1975. 215

L. Bloom, ‘The History of Bourne Mill and It’s Significance in Colchester’s Cloth Industry’, University of

Essex, BA project (2003), p.33; J. Hamilton, ‘Spotlight on Colchester’, Essex Countryside, July 1976, p.57.

63

machinery had been retained it could have easily accommodated the artist’s studio and have

been a great attraction. “I sincerely hope that this case will not be treated as a precedent,

and that any other mills which the Trust may own will not be similarly gutted”.216

A major problem throughout the period from 1936 to the late 1970s was the condition of

the pond. Once the mill had stopped working in 1935 the lack of moving water immediately

caused the pond to silt up and in the shallower water weed became a problem.217

In May

1939 a local resident, Mr Smallwood, wrote to the Trust stating that the water surface of the

pond was rapidly diminishing due to silt and weed growth, and that the garbage on the

surface was becoming “a real eyesore”.218

This remained a particular problem when Major

Ponder took over the lease of mill in 1951. He reported that 150 people had descended on

him at the site demanding to know what he was going to do about the pond. In desperation,

and to the Trust’s embarrassment, he wrote to Queen Mary asking her to intervene with

Colchester Council.219

Local concern continued, against a more general background of dismay about the

destruction of Colchester’s historic landscape. Duncan Clark proposed via the press that the

national government should be made responsible for local monuments such as the castle

and Roman wall and he also raised the neglect of Bourne Pond by The National Trust. This

led to a cartoon in the Essex County Standard (8th

January 1954), linking the pond’s future

to the contemporary wave of nationalisation (below).220

The issue did not die down, and a

year later on the 6th

of January 1955 Colchester Council wrote to The National Trust

pressing them to clear out the pond, while making it clear that it was the Trust’s

responsibility and not that of the ratepayers. Their letter concluded “it is unfortunately

evident that the reputation of the Trust is bound to suffer unless effective steps are taken to

improve the condition of the Pond without delay”.221

216

NT Eastern Regional Office, B187, Report on Bourne Ponds Mill, 19th

Feb., 1974. 217

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, Rudsdale to NT, 19th

Dec., 1940. 218

NT Central Archive, Box 101:12, 19th May, 1939. See also 25th Aug., 1939.

219 NT Central Archive, Box 128:28, 25

th Oct., 1951.

220 Essex County Standard, 8

th Jan., 1954 (cartoon: ‘Nip’s Nationalisation nightmare’).

221 NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, letter, 6

th Jan., 1955.

64

The negative publicity generated action. Early in 1955 The National Trust considered

filling in the pond with broken concrete and hardcore, but the 20,000 cubic yards required

was regarded as too costly. A suggestion that the pond could be used as a Council refuse

dump was rejected by the Borough Engineer because of possible pollution. Thus during

1955 and 1956 serious investigation was finally made into clearing the pond.222

By April

1956 The National Trust Estates Committee had recommended that £2,200 be spent on

Bourne Pond, provided Colchester Corporation and Essex County Council would in future

contribute £100 p.a. to cover future cleaning. In May of that year Colchester actually

offered £150 if the Trust were to clear the Pond and maintain it to the satisfaction of the

Borough Engineer.223

Finally, on the 18th

of June 1956 The National Trust Finance

Committee authorised expenditure of £2,500 on Bourne Pond, and a quotation from J.B.

Carr Ltd was accepted.224

After the clearance the ponds were re-stocked with carp and

tench by the Essex River Board.225

222

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, correspondence Jan. to Nov. 1955, passim. 223

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, Minutes of Estate Committee, 10th

April, 1956. 224

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 18th

June, 1956, 2nd

July, 1956. 225

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, 26th

Nov., 2nd

Dec., 1957.

65

Despite the expensive clearance work, by December 1958 the local press reported that

weed grown again covered the surface.226

This formed a haven for wildlife, the Eastern

Daily Express (April 1960) recording the wealth of aquatic plants and animal life including

moorhens, dabchicks, coot and mallard.227

About this time the Trust struck an agreement

with the Conservation Corps, who cleared a large stretch of the pond and removed weed in

June 1960.228

The Corps visited again and cleared a quarter of the pond during the Whitsun

holiday of 1962, but then sent an invoice for the two visits for £28 7d. This dismayed the

Trust’s officers who were under the impression that the work was free.229

The Conservation

volunteers returned again in Whitsun 1963.230

In 1964 the Essex River Board cleared

Bourne Pond of weed with the co-operation of Colchester Borough Council.231

Weed

growth, silting and de-oxygenation remained long-term problems, however. In 1969 Peter

Watts commented that the fish in the pond had long since died off and nothing larger than a

stickleback now lived there. Waterbirds then included swans, coots, moorhens and mallard.

Regular visitors included dab-chicks, tufted duck, pochard and various gulls. Kingfishers

and herons were seen occasionally and ordinary suburban and even country birds were seen

regularly.232

226

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B185, Colchester Gazette, 2nd

, Dec., 1958. 227

Eastern Daily Express, 14th

May, 1960. 228

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 14th

June, 1960. 229

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 26th

Nov., 1962. 230

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 10th

May, 1963. 231

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B186 Correspondence file, 14th

Sept., 1964. 232

NT Eastern Regional Office, Box B187, Major Ponder’s draft guidebook with amendments and additions

by P. Watts (1969).

66

8 Conclusions and interpretation

Soon after The National Trust acquired the property J. Dixon-Scott noted that although it had

been suggested that “the building was originally erected as a monastic fishing lodge by the

monks of St. John’s Abbey in Colchester”, there were two reasons for supposing that to be

unlikely. First, the building was clearly dated to 1591 by its date stone, and second the design

was Elizabethan influenced by Flemish/Dutch architectural patterns.233

To which we could

also add that as the structure clearly contains rubble from St. John’s abbey buildings, so the

superstructure at the very least must post-date the dissolution and demolition of the abbey.

Postcard sent in 1918, with a caption that reflects the contemporary local view of the monastic

origin of the building (Author’s postcard collection).

The function of the building as a mill has also been seriously questioned. The National Trust’s

architects John E.M. Macgregor and Marshall Sisson were convinced it was originally a

fishing box or a ‘water-pavilion’ where dinner-parties might be held overlooking the ponds.234

The DoE List also stated that “its elaborate character suggests that it was built as a fishing

lodge”.235

This argument was developed by Martin Drury in an article published in Country

233

England Under Trust. the Principal Properties held by the National Trust in England and Wales

described and illusrtrated by J. Dixon-Scott (London, 1937), pp.45-7. 234

For example: J.E.M. Macgregor, ‘Bourne Mill, Colchester. Report on possible conversion’, 19th

August

1958. 235

Department of Environment, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: Colchester

Borough (1971): Bourne Road. Bourne Mill (24/2/1950).

67

Life in July 1972, citing Bourne mill as an early example of the fishing lodges known

elsewhere from the 17th

and 18th

centuries. They typically served a dual purpose, as shelter for

fishermen and storage of equipment, often in remote and wild places, but also as “desirable as

incidents in landscape” often constructed with frivolous renderings of architectural styles

currently in vogue.236

The new edition of Pevsner’s guide to Essex has also accepted this

interpretation.237

Between the 1940s and 1960s this general reading of the building played an

important part in the removal of the milling machinery, which was regarded as an intrusion.

That banqueting of some from took place at Bourne mill seems certain. Nonetheless, the

general view that the building was constructed purely as a fishing lodge, and only afterwards

converted, perhaps first to a fulling mill and later to a corn mill, needs to be carefully

examined. Historical sources have indicated quite clearly that a mill was present on the site up

to the time of its purchase by Thomas Lucas in 1590, so if the existing building was not a

replacement then where was the mill and what happened to it after 1591? Some commentators

have speculated that the original mill, perhaps of timber, may have stood on the south end of

the mill-dam where there is an ancient outlet from the pond.238

As no documentary evidence

survives to support the existence of this separate mill, or of its demolition, that can only

remain speculation until such time as (a) archaeological exploration is undertaken, or (b) a

new documentary source revealing two contemporaneous buildings, a mill and a fishing

lodge, is uncovered. However, Hervey Benham thought it likely that the new building housed

a mill from the outset, arguing that the later insertion of the internal wheel would have been a

task of great difficulty.239

This has also been the conclusion of Nicholas Cooper’s recent study

of the fabric which has suggested that the building served “as a fishing lodge or banqueting

house on the upper floor, and probably a water mill on the lower”.240

If the building was intentionally dual-purpose would it have functioned with fulling or corn-

grinding machinery when first constructed? Fulling-stocks would have required less room and

thus have been more easily accommodated on the ground floor of the building alone, which

may favour that interpretation. The chronology is also appropriate, for demand for fulling

capacity was probably high and rising in the late 16th

century, although not necessarily

236

M. Drury, ‘The Architecture of Fishing’, Country Life, July 27th

, 1972, pp.202-5. 237

J. Bettley and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Essex (new edition, 2007), p.299. 238

ERO, transcript of Rudsdale, Colchester Journals, 22 June 1943. 239

Benham, Some Essex Water Mills, p.96. 240

N. Cooper, ‘Bourne Mill, Colchester. A note on the fabric’, unpublished report (National Trust, 2005), p.1.

68

connected to Dutch baymaking. According to Kerridge, the Colchester Dutch initially

produced a fine high quality dress bay which required scores of ‘thickers’ to walk the bays in

footstocks and to raise the nap on them by teasels set in wooden frames. Instead it was the

coarser types of ‘country’ bays (already produced by Englishmen) that were commonly

‘thicked’ in the mill. Only as English and Dutch baymaking merged into one during the 17th

century were all products of this type sent to mills for fulling. Bourne mill was constructed on

the cusp of these transitions.241

If we accept, for the moment, the argument for a dual purpose, then we might also consider a

further, and hitherto unexplored, possibility that the new construction of 1591 was a direct

replacement of a similar building. Banqueting houses certainly had a long pedigree, stretching

back before the Renaissance. Late medieval examples are known within designed landscapes

which provided views over parks and gardens some of which included ponds and other water-

based features.242

Some large and well constructed monastic mills are also thought to have

had a dual purpose. One surviving example is the large mill at the Cistercian Fountains abbey,

Yorkshire, which may have also served as a granary and for other industrial purposes.243

Neither were monastic fish houses unknown, and Bond has argued that they may have been

common: a spectacular example belonging to Glastonbury abbey survives beside the major

fishery at Meare Pool, Somerset (dated 1332-35). This substantial stone building had two

domestic chambers on the first floor above a ground floor where it is suggested that fish were

prepared, salted and stored.244

Freshwater fish were an important source of food amongst the

aristocratic classes (especially during Lent), and their consumption also served as a significant

status symbol in the medieval period. Possibly the sporting aspect also developed earlier than

is often imagined, as the first known treatise on angling is attributed to Juliana Berners,

apparently a prioress of Sopwell in Hertfordshire in the mid 15th

century.245

241

E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (1985), p.95, 97-99, 103. 242

S. Moorhouse, ‘The Medieval Parks of Yorkshire: Function, Contents and Chronology’ in R. Liddiard, ed.,

The Medieval Park. New Perspectives (2007), pp.118-19. For general context see: R. Liddiard, ‘Medieval

Designed Landscapes’, in M. Gardiner and S. Rippon, eds, Medieval Landscapes (Landscape History after

Hoskins, Volume 2, Macclesfield, 2007), pp.201-14. 243

M. Watts, Water and Wind Power (Shire Publications, 2000), pp.30-1. 244

C.J. Bond, ‘Monastic Fisheries’, in M.Aston, ed., Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in

England, BAR British Series 182 (1988), p.82; M. Aston and E. Dennison, ‘Fishponds in Somerset’,

ibid., pp.394-5, 397 (picture). 245

C.J. Bond, ‘Monastic Fisheries’, p. 84; C. Dyer, ‘The consumption of fresh-water fish in medieval

England’, in M.Aston, ed., Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England, BAR British Series

182 (1988), pp.27-35.

69

The 14th

-century Glastonbury abbey fish house at Meare Pool, Somerset

(reproduced from M. Aston, ed., Aspects of the Medieval Landscape of Somerset (1988)).

What can Thomas Lucas have hoped to achieve with the construction of his new building?

Examination of Nicholas Cooper’s report on the fabric suggests the following aspects are

worth considering in this regard:

1. Re-used stonework from St. John’s abbey

2. Lucas coat of arms (reproduced below) over doorways, name and date stone

3. Ornate and oversize gables in Flemish style

4. Domestic accommodation on upper floor with two fireplaces and windows giving good

views of Bourne pond

As John Walter has described, although of descent from Suffolk gentry, John Lucas had first

cemented his family’s economic and social position by service in local government as

Colchester’s town clerk and by marriage into local mercantile families. While the Dissolution

gave the family the lands “to buttress their claim to gentle status”, it may have also led to

aggressive attitudes in defence of their new status and thus exacerbated conflicts with the

70

townspeople.246

Moreover, Sir Thomas Lucas’s acquisition of the manor of Greenstead (1563)

and of Bourne mill (1590) may be seen as deliberate steps to reconstitute the landholdings and

powerbase of the former monastery, albeit under new lay owners, and present a jurisdictional

challenge to Colchester’s Corporation and its Liberty. In this context it is worth contemplating

whether the considerable re-use of masonry from the demolished abbey could have been a

deliberate statement on the part of Lucas indicating continuity of ownership.247

It is likely that

similar work was evident in the Lucas mansion on the former abbey site, although virtually

nothing now survives except the heavily restored 15th

-century gatehouse and a few pieces of

precinct wall; the latter also contains some moulded stones reused from the abbey

buildings.248

The date stone on the building naming Thomas Lucas as the builder and the large Lucas coat

of arms over the main ground floor entrance also reveal a very specific concern with

publicising the family’s lineage and status.

Lucas coat of arms over main ground floor entrance to Bourne mill

246

J. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers

(Cambridge, 1999), p.85. 247

“Where buildings had continued to some extent to serve the same purpose, this could be presented as an

expression of continuity”: J. Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’. Gentry culture and the development of local

history in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (MUP, 2006), p.225. 248

RCHME, Essex, vol. 3 (1922), pp. 47-8. See also VCH Essex, ix, pp.303-4.

71

In this regard, the position of the coat of arms over the lower (eastern) ground floor entrance

into the mill, rather than on the upper (western) first floor entrance into the banqueting room,

might appear surprising. Indeed, it could be put forward as an argument against the building

originally having served an industrial use at all, perhaps being entirely domestic or social in

function. Nevertheless, if the ground floor had been designed as a fulling mill, then a counter-

argument may be deployed, for as such the building could have played a pivotal role in the

local economy and relations of production. Although Walter has suggested that the gentry

were relatively absent from the everyday lives of clothworkers, the acquisition of local fulling

mills by families such as the Lucases gave them control over a key industrial process.

Colchester clothiers would have delivered their cloths to be fulled at Bourne, Cannock or

other mills on a regular basis, and thus the positioning of the Lucas coat of arms over the main

working entrance at Bourne mill could have been a very visible statement of social and

economic standing and authority.249

Although the mill was constructed fairly cheaply from rubble, it then received considerable

decoration through flintwork galletting, attractive mullion windows and exuberant curved

gables topped by pinnacles.250

These gables were described in The National Trust guidebook

to the mill as among the best English examples of a style derived from the late 16th

-century

ornamental pattern-books of the Netherlands, in particular those published by J. Vredeman de

Vries.251

Direct derivation from such architectural plates is quite unusual, because stylistic

treatments could be quite free and often undertaken on the initiative of craftsmen rather than

representing deliberate acts of design by a patron. However, the gables are indeed similar to

many Dutch public and private buildings of the same period and Nicholas Cooper considers

them likely to be the product of Dutch craftsmen.252

Certainly the large Dutch community in

Colchester, who controlled the traded in bays and says at the Dutch bay hall, may have

included such masons or may have provided a route by which such men gained the contract,

although none have been identified from the sources available.253

As a leading urban and

249

Walter’s important discussion of the role of class antagonism and perceptions in the attacks upon

Lucas in 1642, in particular with regard to the cloth industry, does not refer directly to fulling at

Bourne mill or other sites: Walter, Understanding Popular Violence, pp.244-5, 277, 279. 250

Cooper, ‘Bourne Mill, Colchester. A note on the fabric’. 251

Bourne Mill (National Trust Guidebook, 1986); J. Vredeman de Vries, Architectura (Antwerp, 1563). 252

J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 (1981), pp.50, 53-54, plate 26; E.H. Kuile,

‘Architecture: the Sixteenth Century from the Renaissance’, in J. Rosenberg, S. Silve and E.H. Kuile, ed.,

Dutch Art and Architecture 1600 to 1800 (1977), pp.377, 380-1, 384; Cooper, ‘Bourne Mill, Colchester. A

note on the fabric’, pp.1-2. 253

For the rapid growth of the Dutch migrant community see: W.J.C. Moens, ed., Register of Baptisms

in the Dutch Church at Colchester from 1645 to 1728 (Hugenot Society of London, 1905), pp.i-iii; L.F.

72

government official Lucas would have had substantial contacts with the Dutch populace,

although few Dutchmen actually lived in St. Giles parish.254

Whether or not Lucas had a personal interest in the building’s architectural style remains

unknown, but the extravagant execution must reflect a deliberate demonstration of his wealth

and position in society. The landscape around Bourne mill was probably quite open and the

building could have been appreciated from a considerable distance. Bourne mill also fits into

a contemporary pattern of lesser buildings on aristocratic estates being subjected to

architectural experimentation, a notable example being the triangular lodge built by Sir

Thomas Tresham at Rushden in Northamptonshire in 1594. That building also has fanciful

gables with pinnacles and richly decorated masonry walls and was possibly built as a retreat

to entertain guests. Another building with certain similarities is the elaborate Hawking Tower

at Althorp Park, Northamptonshire, built for Robert Lord Spencer 1612-13. That had a

viewing gallery on the first floor and external tablet recording Lord Spencer’s responsibility

for the construction and also the arms of Lord Spencer and the Sovereign.255

Another possible

parallel are the picturesque East and West Banqueting Houses at Old Campden House,

Chipping Camden (Gloucs.), of similar date.256

The stylistic treatment at Bourne mill may

originally have extended to its adjacent cottage, on the evidence of the chimneys depicted on

the earliest surviving photograph of c. 1852. Nothing more definite can be said because of the

evident destruction and rebuilding of the cottage after the 1884 earthquake, but the cottage

was probably built for the miller and, perhaps, the fisherman.257

Finally, the construction of domestic accommodation on the first floor, with its four-centre

fireplaces and excellent views over Bourne Pond, does appear to support an entertainment

function. Generally such banqueting buildings were of similar form: two-storied with the

Roker, ‘The Flemish and Dutch Community in Colchester in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’,

Proceedings of the Hugenot Society of London, XXI (1), (1966), p.15-17, 19; N. Goose, ‘The Dutch in

Colchester in the 16th

and 17th

centuries: opposition and integration’, in R. Vigue and C. Littleton, eds.,

From Strangers to Citizens (2001), pp.88-9; VCH Essex, ix, p.110 for Dutch bay hall. 254

Moens, ed., Register of Baptisms, pp.104-08. A petition on behalf of the Dutch congregation was

sent to Lucas as one of the Colchester bailiffs in 1603, emphasising the benefits of the New Draperies

to the town: Ibid. pp.142-3; Goose, ‘The Dutch in Colchester….: opposition and integration’, p.90. 255

Bourne Mill (National Trust guidebook, 1986); J.A. Gotch, Early Renaissance Architecture in England

(London, 1901), p.212 and Figure 19. 256

NMR pictures available at: http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk. I am grateful to Anna Forrest

for drawing my attention to these buildings. 257

See above, pp.31, 39, 41. I am grateful to Elizabeth Williamson for discussing this point with me.

73

main room on the upper floor having large windows with a view of the landscape.258

Other

late Tudor houses, including several in Essex, are known to have had banqueting houses in

their gardens or parks where visitors could be entertained.259

Lucas, like other major

landowners with responsibilities in local government and society, could have required such

facilities for entertaining important guests. It is known that he had earlier played host to

Queen Elizabeth I during two of her “progresses” through Essex in 1561 and 1579.260

The decision to build such a banqueting house, as part of the redevelopment of an existing

mill site, was probably influenced by the opportunities for extravagance and display, by the

excellent views across Bourne pond, and finally by the available fishing. The pond had served

as the abbey’s fishpond, and this report has identified its continuing use as a fishery up to the

late 19th

century.261

Since the Later Middle Ages the sport of fishing had certainly become (or

continued to be) associated with elite society and values. The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an

Angle by Dame Juliana Berners, first printed in The Boke of St. Albans (1496) but perhaps of

mid-15th

century origin, has already been noted. By the later 16th

and earlier 17th

century a

considerable literature had developed, such as the anonymous The Arte of Angling (1577),

Leonard Mascell, A Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line (1590), John Dennys, The Secrets

of Angling (1613), and Gervase Markham, A Discourse of the General Art of Fishing with an

Angle (1614).

Taking The Arte of the Angler as an example, G.E. Bentley has described how the treatise

presented angling as an excellent sport, giving instructions as to how to catch certain fish,

with tackle, baits and tactics, and finally listing all the virtues of the perfect angler.262

Naturally, these books were aimed at a high class audience, and Burton’s Anatomy of

Melancholy (1621) indicates that fishing was commonly regarded alongside other

gentlemanly field sports of the period:

258

P. Henderson, The Tudor House and Garden (London, 2005), pp.155-63. I am grateful to Nick

Easton for this reference. 259

Contemporary maps appear to show such banqueting houses at Moulsham Hall and Thorndon Hall,

belonging to the Mildmay and Petre families respectively: N. Easton, ‘Buildings in the Landscape of

Tudor Essex’ (unpublished draft PhD paper, 2007), pp.41-2. 260

J. Walter, John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester

Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), p.86. 261

See this report, above, pp.19-20, 25, 29, 32, 42. 262

G.E. Bentley, The Arte of Angling 1577 (Princetown University Press, 1958), pp.1-11.

74

“Fishing is a kind of hunting by water, be it with nets, weels, baits, angling, or otherwise, and

yeilds all out as much pleasure to some men as dogs or hawks…”

Indeed Burton regarded it as preferable to some:

“But he that shall consider the variety of baits for all seasons, and pretty devices which our

anglers have invented, peculiar lines, false flies, several sleights, etc., will say that it deserves

like commendation, requires as much study and perspicacity as the rest, and is to be preferred

before many of them.”

The same author also drew attention to the quiet and contemplative nature of angling

compared with hunting and hawking, and suggests additional factors that led to its popularity:

“..and if so be the angler catch no fish, yet he hath a wholesome walk to the brookside,

pleasant shade by the sweet silver streams; he hath good air, and sweet smells of fine fresh

meadow flowers, he hears the melodius harmony of birds, he sees swans, herons, ducks,

water-hens, coots, etc., and many other fowl, with their brood, which he thinketh better than

the noise of hounds, or blast of horns, and all the sport that they can make.” 263

The above description, of the water, the meadows and the wildfowl, seems to perfectly evoke

the setting and environment of Bourne mill and its pond.

263

R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, introd. by H. Jackson (London, 1932; reprinted 1961),

Volume 2, pp.73-4.

75

9 Recommendations for further study

Bourne mill is exceptionally interesting small building of the late 16th

-century and it deserves

to better known and understood. The balance of probabilities suggests that Thomas Lucas

constructed it as a dual-purpose structure, incorporating both an industrial use as a mill and a

social function as a banqueting and/or fishing lodge. Whether fulling or corn-grinding took

place at the mill remains uncertain; it is possible that both activities took place, either at the

same time or alternatively. Additionally, it is possible that the building was designed as a

successor to an earlier building of St. John’s Abbey, and that various aspects of its form,

design and materials were intended to convey both high status and continuity of lordship.

1. Documentary research

The main and easily searched sources have been accessed. Further work on Colchester’s late

medieval and early modern court rolls and other documents and searches of un-indexed

materials relating to the Lucas family in TNA might reveal further information, but this would

be time-consuming.

2. Oral History

There may still be local people who remember the mill in the earlier and mid-20th

century and

could perhaps add further perspectives from the local community. Contact could be made

with the officers of the Colchester Recalled Oral History project.

3. Structure

A full architectural report by Nicholas Cooper is available on the building. If the timbers

allowed, a dendro-chronological analysis of the roof structure might reveal its date more

precisely. The question of whether the roof was originally tiled or thatched could also be

further investigated.

4. Landscape

While much has been uncovered concerning the structure and its use over time, comparatively

little is known about its environmental setting. A full landscape archaeology survey, paying

particular attention to the dam and waterways, might prove very instructive. Advice from an

expert in this field could be taken on the appropriate methodology and feasibility.

76

5. Context

There are still many gaps in our knowledge of this remarkable building, partly brought about

by the relative lack of documentary sources for the earliest periods. Interpretation of this

building is thus partly dependent upon identification of comparable structures and functions

elsewhere; steps by The National Trust to raise wider awareness may bring dividends.

6. Funding and Publication

Programmes of further research (especially 4. above) and for publication could be sought

from both local and national heritage organisations. Although a small property, Bourne mill

will be of special interest to both academic and local students of Tudor architecture, mills and

milling, and the history of Colchester.

77

Bibliography of primary and secondary sources

Unpublished primary sources

Bedfordshire Record Office (Beds. RO)

N.B. This is a large archive. All items listed here were inspected, but not all have been used in

the report footnotes.

L17 Introduction to on-line catalogue

L17/84 Deed, 1651

L17/253-9 Leases, 1730-1790

L22/112 Marriage settlement, 1662/3

L23/462 Lease, 1897

L23/656 Land sales, 1917

L23/726 Land sales, n.d. [c. 1917?]

L23/729 Abstract of title to estates, 1917

L24/372 Abstract of grants, realting to tithes, c. 1749

L24/372-86 Legal papers

L26/908 Court roll, 1511-1581

L26/932 Rental, 1711

L26/970 Valuation and survey book, 1809

L26/973 Map of Glebe lands, 1797

L26/975 Map of Essex & Suffolk estate: section 16 Bourne mill (1797)

L26/976-7 Survey (to accompany map above), 1798

L26/979 Survey and valuation, 1809

L26/981 Valuation and survey, 1824

L26/982/1-2 Map to accompany the above survey, 1824

L26/984 Survey/atlas, 1854

L26/1457 Account book, 1639-49

L26/1462 Account of rents, 1740-1742

L26/1464 Account of rents, 1792

L26/1473 Valuation, 1824

L26/1519 Valuation, 1906

L28 Attested copies of three Wiltshire Record Office deeds, 1772-1805.

Colchester Public Library (CPL), local studies collection

Press cuttings file, re: Bourne mill.

Essex County Council (ECC)

Essex Historic Environment Monument Full Report (SMR 10 – MEX129).

Essex Historic Environment Designation Full Report (DEX12909).

‘Booker’Index cards. Bourne mill Colchester (9 October, 1970).

78

Essex Record Office (ERO)

Acc. A2308 Ms. Diaries and papers of the late Mr. E. Rudsdale (d. 1952).

D/B 5 Cr1 (1310) to D/B 5 Cr186 (1626): Colchester court rolls [transcripts only used]

Colchester court roll transcripts (by I.H. Jeayes and W.G. Benham)

D/DU 116/1 Copy of quitclaim, 1544/45 Richard Duke to Augustine Beriff

D/Q 30/1/4 Deeds, Winsley’s Charity, Colchester, 1656-post 1720

D/Q 30/1/6 Deeds, Winsley’s Charity, Colchester, 1788, 1792

OS 1” surveyor’s drawings sheet 15 (1805)

OS 1:2,500 (25”) 1st edition sheet XXVII no. 16 (surveyed 1876)

OS 1:2,500 (25”) 2nd

edition sheet XXVII no. 16 (surveyed 1898)

OS 1:2,500 (25”) New series sheet XXXVII no. 7 (surveyed 1923)

OS 1:2,500 (25”) New series sheet XXXVII no. 7 (surveyed 1940)

OS 6” (1:10,560) sheet TM 02 SW (1967).

T/A 163/1 Lucas/de Grey estate, Calendar of deeds (Beds. RO)

T/A 163/2 Lucas/de Grey estate, Calendar of additional deposits (Beds. RO)

T/A 163/3 Lucas/de Grey estate, Calendar of correspondence etc. (Beds. RO)

T/A 228/2/1 Catalogue of Lucas collection in Beds. RO.

T/A 460/1 Letter-book of Isaac Boggis, Colchester baymaker, 1772, 1790-1.

T/M 235/1 Map of Countess de Grey’s estate, 1797 1824 [copy of Beds. RO, L26/975]

T/M 238/1 Map of Countess de Grey’s estate, Mile End and Greenstead, 1824 [copy of

Beds. RO, L26/982/1]

Department of Environment, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest:

Colchester Borough (1971).

St. John’s abbey ledger book

The National Archives (TNA)

Census

HO 107/344/5 (1841)

HO 107/1781 (1851)

RG9/1098 (1861)

RG10/1684 (1871)

RG11/ 1788 (1881)

RG12/1406 (1891)

RG 13/1706 (1901)

Miscellaneous

PROB 11/118 Will of Sir Thomas Lucas (1611)

SC6/Hen VIII/976 Account roll

79

E 310/13/41

E 318/2/578

E134/8 Chas I Mic./18

E 134/8 & 9 Chas I. Hil./21

The National Trust (NT)

The National Trust (Bourne mill)

Green file of photocopied notes, letters, photographs and documents.

Cathy Pearson, ed., ‘Extracts from the Colchester Journals of E.J. Rudsdale relating to Bourne

mill’ (August 2000).

Interpretation boards (1st floor).

The National Trust Central Office Archives (Wansdyke)

Box 101:12, file of correspondence Sept. 1935 to Sept. 1937

Box 101:12, file of correspondence Oct. 1937 to Dec. 1947

Box 128:28, file of correspondence, Jan. 1948 to June 1951

Box 128:28, file of correspondence, July 1951 to June 1955 [only part searched]

Box 128:28, file of correspondence, July 1955 to Nov. 1962 [not searched]

Box 128:28, file of correspondence, 1963 to 1976 [not searched]

The National Trust Eastern Regional Office Archives (Westley Bottom)

Box B185, file of correspondence, 1955-1959

Box B186, notes and correspondence, 1960-1965, plus rates 1956-65, ‘tenancys’, 1964-72

Box B187, notes and correspondence, 1966-74

Box B188, correspondence, 1975-1979

Box B189 [not searched]

Box B190, file of correspondence, 1978-1992, plus file ‘Bourne mill repairs, 1975’.

File B4 tenancies.

Bourne mill, Blue file, correspondence

Bourne mill, Blue file, articles

Bourne mill, Blue file, plans

Bourne mill, Blue file, elevation drawings

BM/Box 1, box file containing manila folders of photographs

Green photograph album

Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB)

Bourne mill file (labelled ‘temporary’). Items unnumbered and have been cited in sequence.

80

Published primary sources

W.G. Benham and I.H. Jeayes, Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester, 3 vols.

(Colchester, 1921, 1938, 1941).

W.G. Benham, The Red Paper Book of Colchester (Colchester, 1902).

Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the PRO. Elizabeth I, volume IX, 1580-1582

(HMSO, 1986), p.117.

Calendar of Patent Rolls 32 Elizabeth I (1589-1590) Part 1 (Calendar), List and Index

Society, Volume 301 (2004).

John Chapman and Peter André, Map of Essex (1777).

Rev. Canon J.L. Fisher, ‘The Leger Book of St. John’s Abbey, Colchester’, Transactions of

the Essex Archaeological Society, new series, XXIV (1951), pp.77-127.

J.B. Harley and Y.O. Donoghue, intro., The Old Series Ordnance Survey Maps of England

of England and Wales, vol. 1 (Lympne, 1975), plate 23.

Kelly’s Post Office Directory for Essex (from 1870 to 1937).

Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, XIX (1), (HMSO,

1903) and XIX (2), (HMSO, 1903).

W.J.C. Moens, ed., Register of Baptisms in the Dutch Church at Colchester

from 1645 to 1728 (Hugenot Society of London, 1905).

S.A. Moore, ed., Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Johannis Baptiste de Colecestria, 2 vols

(London, 1897).

Pigot’s Directory (1832).

P.H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex, EPNS vol. XII (Cambridge, 1935).

White’s Directory for Essex (1848, 1863).

Unpublished secondary sources

L. Bloom, ‘The History of Bourne Mill and it’s significance in Colchester’s Cloth Industry’,

History BA Project (University of Essex, 2003).

P.Conway, Surveying Course Scheme, Module 326: Historic Building Case Study (Anglia

Polytechnic University, Faculty of Built Environment, Science and Technology, c. 1980).

N. Cooper, ‘Bourne Mill, Colchester. A note on the fabric’, unpublished report (NT, 2005)

N. Easton, ‘Buildings in the Landscape of Tudor Essex’ (unpublished draft PhD paper, 2007).

81

Published secondary sources

Note: those that contain one or more photographs of Bourne mill are marked thus: *

D. Appleby, Our Fall Our Fame: The Life and Times of Sir Charles Lucas (Newtown, 1996).

M. Aston, ed., Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England, BAR British series 182

(1988).

M. Aston and E. Dennison, ‘Fishponds in Somerset’, in M. Aston, ed., Medieval Fish,

Fisheries and Fishponds in England, BAR British series 182 (1988), pp.391-408.

P. Battrick, ‘Making the wheels turn at Bourne Mill’, National Trust magazine (n.d.)*

H. Benham, Some Essex Water Mills (2nd

edition, Colchester, 1983).*

W.G. Benham, Guide to Colchester and its Environs (Colchester, c. 1922).[copy in ERO]*

W.G. Benham, Benham’s Colchester. A History and Guide (1951).[copy in ERO]*

J. Bensusan-Butt, The House that Boggis Built (Colchester, c. 1972).

J. Bettley and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Essex (new edition, 2007)*

C.J. Bond, ‘Monastic fisheries’, in M. Aston, ed., Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in

England, BAR British series 182 (1988), pp.69-112.

Bourne Mill (National Trust Guidebook, 1986).*

J. Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’. Gentry culture and the development of local history in

Elizabethan and early Stuart England (MUP, 2006).

A.F.J. Brown, Essex at Work 1700-1815 (1969).

A.F.J. Brown, Colchester 1815-1914 (1980).

R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, introd. by H. Jackson (London, 1932;

reprinted 1961), Volume 2.

M. Christy, ‘Essex Rivers and their Names’, Essex Naturalist, vol. XXI (1926), pp.275-302.

T. Cromwell, History and Description of the ancient town and borough of Colchester (1825).

[not seen yet]

C. Crossan, ‘Bourne Watermill’ in P.J.Gilman, ed., ‘Archaeology in Essex, 1993’, Essex

Archaeology and History, Vol. 25 (1994), p.248.

W. Cunningham, Alien Immigrants to England (1897).* [not seen yet]

82

J. Dixon-Scott, England Under Trust. The Principal Properties held by the National Trust in

England and Wales described and illustrated by J. Dixon-Scott (London, 1937).*

Martin Drury, ‘The Architecture of Fishing’, Country Life, July 27 (1972), pp.202-5.*

Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, or, the History of the Ancient Abbies, and

other Monasteries, Hospitals, Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, in England and Wales, 3

Volumes (London 1693).

C. Dyer, ‘The consumption of fresh-water fish in medieval England’, in M. Aston, ed.,

Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England, BAR British series 182 (1988), pp. 27-

38.

J. Gaze, Figures in a Landscape. A History of the National Trust (1988).

John Gerard, The Herball or General Historie of Plants (1597).

N. Goose, ‘The Dutch in Colchester in the 16th

and 17th

centuries: opposition and integration’,

in R. Vigne and C. Littleton, eds., From Strangers to Citizens (Brighton, 2001), pp.88-98.

N. Goose, ‘The “Dutch” in Colchester: the economic influence of an immigrant community in

the 16th

and 17th

centuries’, Immigrants and Minorities, 1 (1982) [not seen yet].

J.A. Gotch, Early Renaissance Architecture in England (London, 1901).

J. Hamilton, ‘Spotlight on Colchester’, Essex Countryside (July, 1976).

B. Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540. The Monastic Experience (Oxford,

1993).

P. Henderson, The Tudor House and Garden (London, 2005), pp.155-63.

P.M. Ireland, ‘The National Trust in Essex’, Essex Countryside, vol. 5, no. 17 (1956), pp.14-

15.*

I.H. Jeayes, ‘Court Rolls of Colchester’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society,

new series, XIV (1915), pp.81-9.

E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester

University Press, 1985).

F.A. King, ‘The Troublesome Bakers of Colchester’, Essex Countryside, vol. 9, no. 47 (1960),

pp.54-5.

M. King, ‘The Essex Earthquake’, East Anglian Magazine (March, 1965).

E.H. Kuile, ‘Architecture: the Sixteenth Century from the Renaissance’, in J. Rosenberg, S.

Silve and E.H. Kuile, ed., Dutch Art and Architecture 1600 to 1800 (1977), pp.371-83.

83

H. Laver, ‘The Last days of Bay-Making in Colchester’, Transactions of the Essex

Archaeological Society, new series, X (1909), pp. 47-54.

J. Lees-Milne, ed., The National Trust (1945).

R. Liddiard, ‘Medieval Designed Landscapes’, in M. Gardiner and S. Rippon, eds, Medieval

Landscapes (Landscape History after Hoskins, Volume 2, Macclesfield, 2007), pp.201-14.

J. Marriage, Colchester. A Pictorial History (Phillimore, 1988).*

W. Marriage and C. Fell-Smith, ‘The History of Corn Milling in Essex’, Essex Review, vol.

XVI (1907), pp.184-95.*

R. Meldola and W. White, Report on the East Anglian Earthquake of 1884 (Essex Field Club

Special Memoirs, Vol. 1, London, 1885).

S. Moorhouse, ‘The Medieval Parks of Yorkshire: Function, Contents and Chronology’ in R.

Liddiard, ed., The Medieval Park. New Perspectives (Macclesfield, 2007), pp.99-127.

P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex (London, 1768), 2 vols.

P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of the most ancient Town and Borough of Colchester

in the County of Essex (1748, 2nd

edition, London, 1768).

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Essex (1954, 2nd

edition, 1965).*

S.E.G. Ponder (revised P. Watts), The National Trust: Bourne Mill (Colchester, 1969).*

L.F. Roker, ‘The Flemish and Dutch community in Colchester in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries’, Proceedings of the Hugenot Society of London, XXI, no. 1 (1966),

pp.15-30.

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical

Monuments in Essex, volume 3 (1922).*

J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530 to 1830 (1991).

L. Syson, British Water Mills (1965).*

P. Tritton, ‘Fulling mills’, Essex Mills Group Newsletter, no. 5 (October, 1986), pp.17-20.

VCH Essex, II, eds., W. Page and J.H. Round (1907).

VCH Essex, IX, ed., J. Cooper (1994).*

John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester

Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999).

M. Waterson, The National Trust; the First 100 years (1994).

M. Watts, Water and Wind Power (Shire Publications, 2000).

84

Appendix: list of photographs and images

The following photographs have been identified, in addition to those published in the

Bibliography of secondary sources listed above (marked above with an *).

Colchester Public Library

E.Col.1 621.2 Four postcards of Bourne mill as follows:

1. ‘Old Mill and Bourne Pond’. 7178 Wyndham series, b/w, c. 1910. “original not held”

2. ‘Colchester, Bourne mill’. Photocrom Co. Ltd. No. 84445, b/w, c. 1930.

3. ‘Colchester, Bourne mill and pond’. Photocrom Co. Ltd. No. 84444, b/w, c. 1930.

4. ‘Colchester Bourne mill. Colourmaster PT8472, colour, c. 1970.

Essex Record Office

I/Da/20/6 Photograph of Bourne mill

I/Mb 90/1/165 Photograph of Bourne mill, Spring 1955 (Essex Countryside, 1955)

I/Mb 90/1/166 Photograph of Bourne mill

Postcard collections yet to be searched.

Essex Countryside

The following editions of Essex Countryside also contain photographs of the mill.

Vol. 5, No. 17 (1956).

Vol. 10, No. 58 (1961).

Vol. 10, No. 59 (1961).

Vol. 15, No. 128 (1967).

Vol. 17, No. 146 (1969), cover photo.

National Trust, Bourne mill, Green file

Photographs of James Ashwell (1821-1888) x 2, Mary Ann Ashwell (1823-1902), Emma

Ashwell (Mrs Legerton, 1860-1952).

Photograph of postcard of Bourne mill, c. 1910

Photograph of mill cottages, n.d.

National Trust Eastern Regional Office

Box file

Photograph, copyright E.J. Rudsdale, of BM from west, supposedly taken c. 1856.

Photograph before demolition of outhouses, 1950s?

Photograph, Lucas coat of arms

Photographs of the mill and cottages taken by Ray Hallett

Photograph of 19th

-century oil painting

Blue file

In memoriam card for James Ashwell

Blue file

Plans by Purcell Miller Tritton & Partners 1992. 1:100

85

Original drawing Jan. 1959 by David Allen and Frank Larkman on behalf of SPAB

Blue file

Plans elevations by Plowman Craven Associates (2000). 1:20

Green Photograph album no. 15

Taken by C.A.S. Urquhart

p.4 84A Cannock mill, 6/10/1969

84B Path from Cannock mill to Bourne mill, 6/10/1969

p.5 83A Vandalism and rubbish dumped at Bourne mill, 6/10/1969

83B “ “

83C Tree vandalism, 6/10/1969

83D Vandalism and rubbish at stream into pond, 6/10/1969

p.6 82A Temporary fencing. View of Bourne mill, 21/4/1969

82B Swan’s nest

Taken by N. de B. Corbin

p.7 9A Lucas Arms, 27/9/1968

9B Stone gables under repair, 27/9/1968

9C Condition of south gable with Mr Page (architect),Mr Peter Watts and children

(tenant), Mr Harwood (NT)

p.8 7F&G Two photographs of stone gables, 30/7/1968

p.9 7B-E Four photographs of condition of stone gables, 30/7/1968

p.10 Four photographs by Mr Peter Watts, may 1967, showing clearance of litter and

rubbish from adjoining land between Bourne mill and Council estate.

p.11 10A New stonework finials

10B Taken by L Harwood 28/10/1965, showing supervision by R.J. Page

Another photograph. New revetting in position on front of dam to cure leak.

Everetts under R.J. Page supervision, 22/9/1965.

p.12 Two photographs by L. Harwood showing retaining wall of new overflow sluice

following leak into basement. Weller and Everetts. 20/11/1964.

p.13 Three photographs of clearance of rubbish and litter from adjacent land between

Bourne mill and Council state. Eventually removed by Council Taken by Peter Watts,

May 1964.

p.14 Bourne mill, 13/4/1972. Notice Board. Giving opening times.

Plus some miscellaneous copies of old photographs.

Photograph File BM/Box 1

Manila folders (these are actually unnumbered)

Folder 1

Photograph of pond after dredging. Jan. 1957

Photograph of Bourne mill taken c. 1856 (NMR BB47/7)

Photograph before dredging by J.B. Carr Ltd, July 1956

Excellent photograph of mill from road showing subsequently demolished outhouses.

Mid 20th

century.

More photographs of before and after dredging. Jan. and July 1956.

86

Lucas coat of arms

Photographs of storm damage to trees, 1987. Damage to structure?

Photographs of Boure mill and cottages taken by Ray Hallett, 1995.

Folder 2

Good but undated picture of internal machinery.

Loose photographs of model by Matthew Payne, 1993, 1994.

Loose photograph of 19th

-century oil painting, owned by National Trust

Folder 3

Nothing of interest.

Folder 4

Architectural survey. 10 Photographs, including some interior shots whilst converted to a

house: 03 &5R; 03 7R; 03 14R.

Folder 5

Bourne mill. Photograph to be used as print for a postcard.

Folder 6

Interior of mill. Series of photographs taken by Ray Hallett, 1995.

Folder 7

Eight photographs of weed clearance by Conservation Corps of Council for Nature, 9-11 June

1962.

Folder 8

Seven photographs of repairs to stonework. April 1975.

Envelope from J. Clarke to mr Corbin’s secretary, 24th

July 1975.

Containing three photographs of Bourne mill found in a box of unsorted, undated,

photographs.

Two photographs, 1950s, very dark.

Photograph of sluice being put in, 1956/7.

NMR

Photographs

BB47/7 View of mill c. 1856 (E.J. Rudsdale)

Two general views. FII.E416-7, possibly c. 1922/23.

+ View of doorway and Lucas arms.

BB007872 A detail view showing galletting, 26/6/1925 (Nathanial Lloyd)

CC000175 A view looking towards the gable, 1923 (Nathanial Lloyd)

C000173 A view showing the gable end, 27/6/1923 (Nathanial Lloyd)

Copy of picture published in RCHM, Essex, vol. iii, p.72 (also taken in 1922/23).

87

View of north wall, undated.

A44/7336 View of doorway and coat of arms (different)

Two general views of Bourne mill, 17/8/1943 (Duncan Clarke)

AA98/17144-7

Three general views of Bourne mill, and a detail of main doorway, 11/10/1947

Undated view, 1950s?

View of mill and pond across road, 22/5/1952 (Miss E. Gardner)

Aerial Photographs [not seen]

5 military obliques (b/w) TM 0023/4-5, 8-10 09/05/1948.

16 vertical RAF photographs, 1945 to 1970.

The most useful might be RAF/58/47, 51 taken at scale of 1:2500 and 1:2520.

SPAB

Six small and faded photographs of mill, presumably c. 1936.

Private collection (Dr Chris Thornton)

Postcard, ‘Bourne Pond, Colchester’, Valentine’s (colour) series, postmarked 1908.

Postcard, ‘Old Monk’s Mill, Bourne Ponds, Colchester’, Poyser and Co. (b&w), postmarked

1918.

Postcard, ‘Old Mill & Bourne Pond, Colchester’, The “Wyndham series” (b&w), no date,

probably 1920s or 1930s.

88

Bourne Mill, Colchester

Supplementary historical report

[Internal research version]

Dr Christopher Thornton

August 2015

89

This report has been prepared in response to a commission from the National Trust to search

for further documentary evidence that may through further light on the use of the building

and the occupants of the site from the earlier sixteenth century to the later seventeenth

century.

I would like to thank the following individuals and organisations (and their staff) for their

generous assistance with this project, including advice on source material, access to

collections and manuscript notes, and general discussion and advice: Jane Bedford; John

Smith; the Essex Record Office; The National Archives (Kew).

Report prepared by

Dr Christopher Thornton, FSA, FRHistS

Commissioned by

Simon Cranmer and David Piper

The National Trust

© The National Trust 2015

90

Bourne Mill, fulling, and its millers in the 16th

and 17th

centuries

Objectives

The first objective of this research project has been to explore evidence concerning fulling

activity, in particular (a) whether or not fulling took place on the site before Thomas Lucas’s

new building of 1591 and (b) whether or not that new building was planned as a fulling mill.

The second objective was to establish more information about the millers, both before and

after the acquisition of the site by Lucas. These two objectives are so closely related that the

following report has been structured around the names of the millers identified.

Finally, a search was also made for any documentary material that could authenticate the

unreferenced statement in Hervey Benham’s Essex Water Mills that the mill was held by

Dutch refugees in the English Civil War who turned it into a fulling mill for the cloth

trade.264

As noted in my original report, Bourne Mill is relatively poorly served by historical sources

before the 18th

century.265

However, some material survives in the National Archives (TNA)

relating to the site when it was owned by St John’s Abbey, and afterwards when it had

passed for a short period into the hands of the crown. Archives relating to the site, when

under the ownership of the Lucas family from 1590 onwards, have not been preserved (with

one exception), probably due to the destruction of the Lucas mansion at St John’ abbey

during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s. These events make the task of identifying

activities at the mill extremely difficult. Nevertheless, in the course of this research some

new material has been uncovered in both the TNA and the Essex Record Office (ERO),

which helps to extend our understanding.

Thomas Buxton

As described in my first report (2007), after the dissolution of St John’s abbey the mill

passed into crown hands. In 1539 the lessee of the mill was Thomas Buxstone (otherwise

Buxton), who held under a 21-year lease granted by the abbey from 5th

November 1525.

264

H. Benham, Some Essex Water Mills (2nd

edn, Colchester, 1983), p. 96.

265 C. Thornton, Bourne Mill, Colchester. Historical Report (National Trust, 2007),

pp. 6–7.

91

Buxstone paid an annual ‘farm’ (i.e. rent) of £6 per annum, although he also had

responsibility for repairs. As Bourne mill was described in the royal account roll of 1539 as

a ‘water mill’, while other mills were specifically stated to be fulling mills, the suggestion

was made that Bourne mill had continued to operate as a corn mill during his tenure. This

document has been checked again and in the same paragraph that Bourne Mill was described

as ‘water mill’ another mill called Stocks (Stokes) mill was described as a fulling mill.

However, it should be noted that ‘water mill’ leaves open the possibility that it was equipped

to both grind corn and full cloth rather than being for one purpose only.266

A few further pieces of information have now been found. In 1536 a property transaction

preserved in the ERO records that Brisingham Hamond of Colchester, gent., transferred all

his rights to Thomas Buxton in the tenement called the Storehouse, with shops, solars,

cellars, rentaries and gardens in the parish of St Runwald, Colchester, and four acres of

arable land called ‘Windmyll Hyll’ within the Liberty of Colchester.267

Another document

in the TNA records a legal dispute between Buxton and Thomas and Alice Rede, but the full

details are unknown.268

The combination of Buxton’s description as a gentleman, the

acquisition of substantial property including land on or near to which windmills were

apparently erected, and the lease of Bourne Mill, suggests that Buxton was an investor and

mill owner rather than a working miller. Indeed, he was probably related to the William

Buxton (d. 1546), who was a mercer of St Runwald’s parish, Colchester, and a Colchester

alderman in the period 1540–46. William’s will does not mention Thomas Buxton (bequests

were made to a Robert Buxton his brother, and his brother’s son another William), but

Thomas was probably already dead by 1546.269

Thomas Buxtone’s 21-year lease would also

have ended in that year, and the end of the lease or his earlier death, may well explain why

the mill was to change ownership in the mid-1540s, as an opportunity would then have

existed to renegotiate the terms of the lease.

Augustine (Austin) and William Beriff

266

Ibid., pp. 21, 23; TNA, SC6/Hen VIII/976, mm.3d, 11d.–12.

267 ERO, D/Y 37/2/14.

268 TNA, C 4/20/57.

269 ERO, D/ACR 3/120. See also: L.M. Higgs, Godliness and Governance in Tudor

Colchester (Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 158.

92

In 1544 Bourne mill was acquired from the crown by Richard Duke of the court of

Augmentations. Examination of a further royal account roll indicates that the mill, again

described as a water mill (molendimum acquaticum) was leased prior to June 1544 by

Thomasine Lake, widow. She and/or her late husband (whose name is unknown) must have

succeeded Buxstone, and her name was later to be preserved in Lakes Meadow and Lakes

Croft, pieces of land attached to the mill half a century later when it was bought by Thomas

Lucas in 1590.270

It is probable that the sale of the mill to Duke was connected to the

expiration of the old lease (see above). Duke likely had no direct interest in milling and

simply took a profit from buying and selling the mill, for later that same year he sold it to

Augustine (Austin) Beriff (Beryff) and his son William Beriff. 271

Augustine was originally

from Monk’s Eleigh in Suffolk and had been admitted as a burgess of Colchester in 1513.

He lived in the parish of St James. Most importantly his wealth seems to have derived from

his occupation as a clothmaker (clothier), and his success is indicated by the fact that he

became an alderman of Colchester between 1537 and 1546.272

The economic background of

the Beriff family in clothmaking is perhaps the first intimation that Bourne mill may have

also fulled cloth, either wholly or alongside corn-milling, by the mid-16th

century.

Further examination of the Beriff family’s history as partly recounted in Lacquita’s Higgs’s

book Godliness and Governance in Tudor Colchester, reveals some interesting connections

with the Lucas family. Colchester was a Protestant town, and the Beriffs had a background

in religious dissent and Protestantism. Augustine possibly had associations with earlier

Lollard sympathizers, and later his son William was one of the servants of Francis Jobson a

chief Colchester supporter of the Duke of Northumberland in attempting to displace the

Catholic Princess Mary with Lady Jane Grey. After Mary’s accession to the throne, Beriff

was arrested by the Colchester bailiffs, examined by the Privy Council, and released under

bond. At the same time the Colchester town clerk, John Lucas (father of Thomas Lucas),

was arrested and placed in the Fleet prison in London as one of the 24 signatories supporting

the alteration of the succession in favour of Lady Jane Grey.273

During this period of

270

TNA, SC6/HENVIII/977; Thornton, Bourne Mill, Colchester, p. 25.

271 Thornton, Bourne Mill, Colchester, p. 24.

272 Higgs, Godliness and Governance, pp. 112, 373.

273 Ibid., p. 373.

93

upheaval another of Augustine’s sons, John Beriff, who was also a clothier of St James

parish, became a Colchester alderman between 1549 and 1559. In the new reign of Queen

Elizabeth the family appear to have lost influence. John Beriff was ousted as an alderman,

William Beriff was arrested for trouble-making and lost his freedom of the borough (i.e.

burgess status), and another brother Thomas Beriff also lost his freedom for using a court

outside of the town in a dispute he was having with the Christmas family (another important

and very wealthy clothier family).274

As I have earlier reported, the Beriff family retained possession of the mill for 35 years until

1580, when they sold it to a miller named John Gibson, perhaps the miller that they had

earlier employed to work the mill.275

Why the Beriff family should have sold the mill at this

point has hitherto been something of a mystery, but now an explanation can be advanced.

The above evidence suggests that the Beriffs were not welcome in Colchester in the 1570s

and 1580s and this may have influenced their decision to sell up. Moreover, the Beriffs were

clearly allies of the Lucas faction in Colchester politics, and they may have intentionally

shifted their operations beyond the town’s boundary into Lucas controlled countryside. In

1588, a short while after parting with Bourne Mill, William Beriff possessed another mill

called Crockleford Mill on the Salary brook in Greenstead where Thomas Lucas was the

manorial lord.276

John Gibson

When the Bourne mill was sold to John Gibson in 1580 he was described as a miller, and

one moreover who was soon fined before Colchester courts in 1581/2 for taking excessive

toll, clearly implying that a corn mill operated on the site.277

No further evidence was

available concerning Gibson at the time of the original report, but a search for probate

material has led to the discovery of the will of a miller called John Gibson (d. 1597), who is

probably to be identified as the same man who held Bourne Mill from 1580 to 1590. At the

274

Ibid., pp. 192–3 (citing ERO D/B 5 Cr 124/9; D/B 5 Cr 125/2–3, 9–10), and p.

373.

275 Thornton, Bourne Mill, Colchester, pp. 24–5.

276 J. Cooper, ‘Mills’, in J. Cooper (ed.), VCH Essex, Volume IX (1994), 261.

277 Thornton, Bourne Mill, Colchester, p. 25; ERO, Colch. Court Roll transcripts, roll 145,

rot. 4.

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time of his death John had moved to West Bergholt where he held the lease of a mill called

Cook’s Mill. This mill lay on a classic milling site on the river Colne, and formed part of the

manor of Cook’s Hall which was then owned by Waldegrave Abell (the Mr. Abel named in

the will).278

It had been a fulling mill as early as 1445.279

In 1597 the lease specifically

stated that there was both a fulling mill and a corn mill, and it also recorded the ‘hammers’

among the equipment. A copy of the will could be obtained from the ERO, but it has been

transcribed and published in Emmison’s Essex Wills series, and is worth repeating in full

here for its interest:280

Will of John Gibson of West Bergholt, miller, 2 Oct. 1597

To Henry and Peter my sons each £4. To Richard Lane who married my daughter Margaret

£8 or else this gift to be void if she live so long till it be due. I give her a flockbed, a brass

pot, a kettle, 2 pewter plates, 4 pounds of wool, a chafing dish, and a bearing sheet. To

Edward Edicke 40s. at 21. To the poor householders of Boxted 4s. To my son John half of

the commodity of my mills, both corn mill and fulling mill, finding them sufficiently set a

work in all things belonging to the working of them, bearing half the charges towards

implements belonging to the mills at any time when need shall serve; I myself to have the

other half of the commodity of both mills, paying the whole year’s rent to Mr Abel for the

same while I live; after my death, that half to Avice my wife during the term of the lease, she

paying the rent and the other half of the charges. James my son shall have the keeping of 2

horses and 2 beasts, paying therefor yearly to me whilst I live 14 nobles; after my decease,

to pay Avice for the keeping of his horses and beasts 5 marks so long as the lease do last. If

she die before the end of the lease, James shall have it, paying out of the mills yearly to John

Gybson my son £4. To James the tools and implements belonging to the mills as mill bills,

hammers and such things as belong to the ‘kiltring’ of the mills.

My wife shall have the meadows, arable, pastures parcel of my lease for her life; when she

die, to James the mills and ground. The residue of my goods and cattle to my wife. I make

John executor. I ordain James supervisor. Witnesses: Thomas Buck, William Dibney,

Richard Spencke.

278

VCH Essex, X (1994), p. 29.

279 Ibid., p. 32.

280 ERO, D/ACW 3/163; F.G. Emmison, Essex Wills. The Archdeaconry Courts

1597–1603 (Chelmsford, 1990), p. 83.

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Although it may again seem inexplicable that Gibson should have been prepared to sell his

freehold ownership of Bourne Mill to become the lessee of Cooks Mill, a plausible

explanation can be advanced. Sir Thomas Lucas, in his wish to reconstitute the St John’s

estate, was a powerful man to whom it would have presumably been expedient to give way.

Gibson probably obtained a good price, and the Cooks Mill site on the Colne was a prime

milling site that continued to full cloth into the later 18th

century when further substantial

investment was to be made there.281

Edward Edwick

No further certain material has been uncovered concerning the millers in the early decades

of the 17th

century. However, while most of John Gibson’s will had concerned the division

of his money and property, chiefly Cooks mill(s), between members of his family, it also

contained one other bequest, apparently to a non-family member, that of 40s. (£2) to Edward

Edicke.282

Edicke and Edwick are variant spellings of the same name, a familiar one as it

appears in the first surviving estate account book of the Lucas family: in 1646 an Edward

Edwick owed £18 half-year’s rent to Sir John Lucas for Bourne mill.283

It seems possible

that after Gibson had left the mill c.1590, the Edwick family became the millers for the

Lucases. One other piece of information has come to light, due to a legal dispute in 1632

that erupted between John Lucas and another local landowner Henry Barrington.284

It

centred around the construction of a windmill, on Barrington’s estate, which potentially

damaged the trade of Cannock Mill. Among the questions asked of a series of witnesses

were some concerning the existence and capacity of other Colchester mills, and one

deposition stated that “Borne mill was used for grinding of corn.” Again, this is not wholly

conclusive, as the dispute was about over-provision of corn-milling capacity in Colchester,

so it remains possible that the site was also involved in fulling if it was additionally

equipped to do so (as many mills were).

281

Benham, Some Essex Water Mills, pp. 84–9.

282 See above, transcription of will, line 3.

283 Beds. RO, L26/1457. See: Thornton, Bourne Mill, Colchester (2007), p. 28.

284 TNA, E 134/8Chas1/Mich18.

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Edward Edicke was still the miller at Bourne Mill when another legal dispute involving

Cannock Mill broke out in 1651, this time apparently concerning the supply of water. He

gave a witness deposition, and it was noted elsewhere that the matter could have been

resolved if Edicke and the miller at Cannock mill, Richard Steele, could have agreed

between themselves.285

Their lack of agreement apparently led the latter to dam his pond so

high that it overflowed.286

It is also worth noting that that the Edwick family may also had

some association with the cloth industry. Although there was a family of that name in the

Great Dunmow area, the Edwicks in question here probably originated from Boxted just to

the north of Colchester. In 1666 a William Edicke, labourer, and a John Edicke,

husbandman, both of Boxted, were indicted before the Quarter Sessions for ‘having no land

or master, or using any art or mystery, etc., refused to work’. The following year, a William

Edick of Boxted, probably one of the same men, was described as a ‘broadclothweaver’.287

Overall, all this evidence, albeit based simply upon surname linkage and rather intangible in

nature, suggests that the miller Edward Edwick who leased Bourne mill c.1646 was related

in some way (either familial or occupational) to John Gibson who had milled there up to

1590. As Gibson was later engaged in fulling at Cook’s Mill, and another member of the

Edwick family seems to have been a clothworker, a connection with fulling is again possibly

implied.

Excerpt from legal case deposition in 1632 recording Bourne mill as grinding corn in 1632

(see entry on line 3): TNA, E 134/8Chas1/Mich18.

285

TNA, E 134/8&9Chas1/Hil21.

286 Ibid.; Cooper, ‘Mills’, p. 260.

287 ERO, T/A 418/163/47; Q/SR 414/73.

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Deposition of Edward Edicke, 1651: TNA, E 134/8&9Chas1/Hil21.

Edwicke was the miller at Bourne mill and the court case in 1651 appears to have partly

involved a dispute of the water supply between him and Richard Steele the miller at Cannick

Mill.

Search for the Dutch millers

A statement was made by Hervey Benham in his book Some Essex Water Mills (1983) that

the mill was held by Dutch refugees in the Civil War who introduced the cloth trade. His

exact wording was as follows:

“With the Royalist Lucas family fortunes under a cloud the mill was acquired by Dutch

refugees who turned it into cloth mill for weaving and bleaching”.

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This information has been repeated in a number of studies and guidebooks, but the original

source of the information was not stated, and my original report was unable to find any

evidence to support it. The following sources have been searched to check whether they

contain any references to Dutch clothiers working at the mill in the 17th

century, and a

complete blank has been drawn again. While it is still possible that the source may turn up,

the information should now be regarded as of doubtful veracity. The reference to Dutch

“refugees” at this date is also slightly suspect, for the Dutch became established in

Colchester much earlier and were fairly integrated by the Civil War period. The whole

reference may be a speculation on Benham’s part, an amalgamation of the Dutch-inspired

architecture and the documented use for fulling in the 18th

century.

The microfilms of the following sources in the Colchester Borough Records have been

checked in the Essex Record Office:

(1) Monday Court Books, which contain court cases and enrolled deeds: T/A 465/151–55

(ERO, Cb1/11–16), covering the period 1638 to 1661.

(2) Thursday Court Books, these mainly contain pleas and other court cases: T/A

465/8/137–8 (ERO, Cb2/16–17), covering 1646–1652, have been scanned. I did not extend

the search to other years as they seemed an unlikely source.

(3) The first surviving Assembly Book, 1647–1666: T/A 465/3 (ERO, D/B 5 Gb4).

(4) Justices book, 1630–1664: T/A 465/126 (ERO, D/B 5 Sb1/4).

In addition, I consulted the following, as the Lucas family were lords of the manor of

Greenstead and the Beriff’s built a mill there (Crockleford mill):

(5) Manorial documents of the manor of Greenstead

ERO, D/DU 2785/1 Court roll, 1625–35

ERO, D/DU 2785/2 Rental 1602–1661

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Other Additional material

(1) I have also searched again the following: W.J.C. Moens (ed.), Register of Baptisms in the

Dutch Church at Colchester from 1645 to 1728 (Hugenot Society of London, 1905). No

relevant information discovered.

(2) ERO, C905 Box 7. Notes of John Bensusan-Butt, including Bourne Mill, Lucas family

and fulling. There was nothing of particular interest among the notes, other than that the

father of John Lucas, town clerk o Colchester (who obtained St John’s abbey), was one

Thomas Fitz-Lucas of Saxham Parva in Suffolk (d. 1531), a solicitor to the crown. However,

the box did contain two photographs of plates from the Universal Magazine, dated October

1749. These show the techniques and machinery used in cloth manufacture by the mid-18th

century. The following scans were bought from the ERO, but if they were to be reproduced

then permission would be required.

Plate 1 (overleaf) shows the preparation of the raw wool – shearing, washing, beating and

combing.

Plate 2 (below) shows the arts of spinning, reeling, warping and weaving of cloth.

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