Moulin de Charlecote

Charlecote Mill, a watermill recorded in the Domesday Survey and in written sources from the Post Medieval to the Modern periods. The present building dates to the 18th century, with two undershot water wheels, and two sets of milling machinery. It was restored in 1978.The mill as you see it today was probably built in the eighteenth century, but on the site of earlier mills. A mill at Hampton Lucy is even mentioned in the Doomsday Book (compiled 1086).  It was then valued at 6s.8d.Little is known of the mills and their millers over the years, but a noticeable incident occurred in 1675 when the miller John Dickens and three other men were indicted for 'the felonious stealing and carrying of two perches and  two pikes of the value of 11d, of the goods and chattels of Richard Lucy  Esq.' Dickens and Robert Nason  confessed, and were sentenced to be 'stripped from the waist downwards and openly whipped through the town of Hampton Lucy till their bodies be bloody'.The present mill building and mill house were evidently built by the Lucy estate, and are still owned by Sir Edmund Fairfax Lucy.The present mill, apparently built in 1752, is a particularly fine building, with walls eighteen inches thick. The names of the millers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century can be ascertained from trade directories, etc. The name of one, William Witherington, who was miller from 1845 to 1864, can be seen carved in the brickwork on the top floor. The last millers were Newbery and Son, from 1936 to the 1950's; however, they used mostly an engine-driven hammer mill, and from the time of the Second World War, the only equipment driven by waterpower was the sack hoist.From 1978, John Bedington had a lease over the mill and he and Tom Mitchell, aided by a band of helpers too numerous to mention, have done extensive repairs to the roof, windows, floor, stairs and doors, gears, stones, sack hoist and bins and the East water wheel. The West water wheel was repaired in 1978 by the Birmingham millwright Bob Atkins at the expense of the BBC for their film of 'The Mill on the Floss'.