The History of Wistaston Mill

By Miss M.J.Lea

Earlier this year, I visited a grand old lady, Miss I. M. Lea (Mollie), who very kindly gave me permission to print the history and her memories of Wistaston Mill. (Thanks are also due to L Twiss, Editor of "Round About", where the article was first published in 1983). My late husband, Eric, knew the "Lea" family well especially Mollie's brother, also named Eric.

There were quite a number of young men in the late 20s, who used to ride motor bikes on John Tatton's small-holding (Broughton Lane end, behind what is now Grocott's Garage). Eric Lea was the successful one, he rode a Norton. Algy Whittingham rode a Sunbeam and his brother Doug rode a Rex Acme. My husband only had an old belt-driven Triumph and was not in their league but I believe they all had loads of innocent fun. Isaac Reece (Ike) who lived at the dairy on the corner of Cottrill Street and Nantwich Road was their advisor on spirit and alcohol, etc. - a good mechanic with a bull-nosed Morris pick-up, at that time.

The site of the mill may well be the oldest inhabited spot in the Parish of Wistaston and the "Lea" family has been there since at least 1874.
Una Bailey, Membership No. 7

The first reference to Wistaston Manor is in the Doomsday Book of 1066, and as it is assumed that it was a working manor farm which customarily had its own milling facilities, it follows that there was also a water mill on this site from these days.

At the beginning of the century Wistaston Mill and Wistaston Manor both belonged to the Squire of Willaston Hall. I remember that Commander Bailey was the squire when I was young.

Wistaston Hall is the large residence on the triangle of land between Nantwich Road and Coppice Lane, almost opposite Colley's Lane. Once a year the tenants would attend the Rent Audit at Willaston Hall. After they had paid their rent for the year the squire provided them with food and drink and a very convivial evening followed. Historians have told me that the mill was built in 1649. The following is an extract from a 'Survey of Cheshire Water Mills' carried out by Mr Rex Wailes, F.S.A. L.I. Mech.E. and his colleague, Mr H. Norris, in the 1960s.

Wistaston Water Mill

"A three story brick and tiled-roofed building, with iron glazing bars to curved arched window openings. The mill is situated in a delightful setting dating from approximately 1650 and was used until 1966, when the bearings failed on the overshot wheel. The premises were then used as a distribution store for animal foodstuffs.

There are two internal water wheels, the overshot being 12'0" by 4'3" and fed by a Pentrough with rise and fall sluice that is reported to have been renewed in 1900. The gearing is mainly of iron originally to three pairs of stones - now only one pair remains. The second wheel is breast shot 15'0" by 5'0" with sliding sluice gate at the bottom of the Pentrough operated by a rack and pinion gear through a lever arm. The wheel is mounted on a wooden shaft with wooden spokes and iron shrouds between which are iron buckets. The wheel is said to have been made by Thomas Hoole of Middlewich, circa 1890, and was at one time power assisted by a horizontal steam engine. There is also only one pair of stones left for this wheel; both are 4' in diameter, one is of Frende Barr and the other of Mow Cop stone. The mill is now owned by Crewe Corporation and it was proposed that it should be preserved as a mill museum but in late 1967 consideration was being given to its sale for house conversion".

There was a large mill pool behind the mill, which was fed by a stream which rises in the Staffordshire hills and meanders through Betley and Gresty to Wistaston and on to join the River Weaver. Locally it is known as the Pebbley Brook. The pool acted as a reservoir to provide the water power for the mill wheel. The water was carried to the wheel via the Pentrough and after turning it, was carried to the wheel leg. A channel called the 'Race' allowed the water to flow back to the main stream. The height of the water in the pool was regulated by heavy water gates placed immediately before the outfall. From there the surplus water ran through a tunnel to continue along the bed of the brook.

On ancient maps this was referred to as the "Lee Flu". The height of the water gates was adjusted by means of a heavy crowbar and levered up and down. The brook still takes the old course but most of the pool has been silted up. The miller also had "Water Rights" for a limited stretch of the brook both up and down stream, so he was able to prevent pollution or obstruction of the water within those limits.

In the late 1800's, it was decided to supplement the water power with a steam engine. This enabled the mill to produce flour in addition to corn. So for a period of its life, Wistastoin Mill was listed as a "Corn and Flour Mill" or as a "Water and Steam Mill".

A boiler house was built onto the southern end of the mill and a tall chimney erected. The latter has long since disappeared. I remember being told that "a ton of slack cost seven shillings in the old days

Now in 1983, the mill has become a beautiful house and home full of charm and character, enjoyed by Mr and Mrs James Gray, the present owners. The wheels and machinery have all been retained and every care was taken in conversion to use old bricks and timbers to comply with the preservation of ancient buildings regulations.

Life at Wistaston Mill - My family has been millers for many generations and I believe that we originally came from Brereton Mill. Indeed, many of the water mills in the area of Cheshire have been operated by families with the surname Lea. My own family originally had the Buckley Mill, situated near the junction of the Pebbley Brook and the River Weaver.

I am not sure when we moved to Wistaston Mill but I know of the following records:-
1874 Henry Lea. Directory of Cheshire and Stalybridge.
1892 Henry Lea. Kelly's Directory of Cheshire.
1895 Henry Lea. Frank Porters Directory.
John Lea. of Crewe
1928 Ernest Norton Lea. Kelly's Directory of Cheshire.

The Ernest N. Lea was my father. He took over the mill from his uncle, John, in 1923. The mill was in full production at that time, taking not only grain from local farmers but from larger mills. Some came from Bibby's Mill in Chester and the Wirral. I remember that the bigger loads were delivered by Hanscombe's steam lorries, from a depot in Tarporley. When the wagon arrived, its grain had to be unloaded into the bay and then hoisted up to the third story of the mill and placed in the large hoppers. It was "all hands on deck" at that time. Some of the lorries arrived late at night and had to be kept overnight until they could be unloaded in daylight.

At that time, the labour force of the mill consisted of my father, brother, mother and Fred Murray. My father spent a lot of his time going round the farms seeking orders or obtaining settlement of bills. Monday was very important because that was when most business was done amongst the farmers at the cattle market. At first my father visited the farms on a bicycle but later graduated to a motor cycle. My brother delivered the produce by horse and cart and later by a Ford van. Fred did the general work of the mill and my mother kept the accounts.

The actual milling was not difficult. Once the grain was in the hoppers at the top of the mill it was gravity fed to the grinding stones and from there it was channelled into bags. Once the grinding had commenced it could be left to do the job. As each bag was filled a balance arrangement rang a bell in sufficient time to run over and replace the full bag. I remember the mill being a busy place with a steady stream of customers. In addition to the orders that my father had obtained, farmers, butchers, etc. would call to collect meal when they had unexpectedly run short. Such people came in the evening; small-holders, pigeon fanciers; people with a few chickens would call for small amounts and we also sold bales of straw. Life at the mill started soon after 6.00 a.m. each morning and lasted until late in the evening.

The first worker at the mill I remember was Jimmy Bruckshaw. He lived in a cottage near Wybunbury Church and walked across Wybunbury Moss, via Shavington and Gresty to the mill fields to be at work at 6.00 a.m. It was people like Jimmy who established the network of footpaths that cover the countryside and which we now regard as useful only as a pleasant stroll.

Jack Baker drove the horse and cart and the lorry - later my brother's job. He lived in the old black and white cottage near to Wistaston school, which has now been demolished.

Harry Murray and his son, Fred, were general mill workers in the 1920's. They lived in the last cottage in Manor Avenue. In those days it was known as "Dark Lane" because prior to the building of the present houses, it wsas a narrow lane flanked by tall trees and ended with a little footpath leading down to the brook.

The mill stones were the most important part of the mill machinery and they had to have grooves criss-crossing their surface, in order for the corn to shuffle over the surface as it was ground and gradually work its way to the central channel, through which it showered down the chute to the waiting bag. The constant grinding of the stones made the grooves shallow. It was the millwright's job to set the stones and re-cut the grooves as they wore down. The millwright that I remember, was Tom Hoole from Middlewich. It was a hard and heavy job, the big mill stones had to be lifted by block and tackle and he would spend all day "dressing" them. He had a real Cheshire accent and always arrived on his bicycle with a rabbit in his poacher's pocket as a present for my mother. So it would be rabbit pie for dinner that day.

After my father acquired the ownership of the mill from Commander Bailey, the whole family was enlisted to run the business. My mother, in addition to running the house and cooking the meals, did all the book-keeping. This often meant working late at night by oil lamp, or even a candle, but we always had the benefit of a nice roaring fire in the grate.

My brother worked in the mill and also started to drive the Ford lorry. He was always good with mechanical things and developed a great interest in motor bikes. Eventually, he took up amateur racing and succeeded in winning both the senior and junior Manx Amateur Grand Prix in 1929. I was still at Wistaston school, but at weekends, I helped to enter purchases into a huge ledger in which all the business of the mill was recorded. It was a very competitive era and my father spent much of his time travelling from farm to farm on his Triumph motor bike trying to persuade the farmers to give him an order, or to collect money that was owed. Times were hard and sometimes he was paid in kind. One day, I arrived home from school to hear he had been given a pony. I was so excited that I rushed into the stable only to be kicked out much faster than I had gone in. The poor pony had been sadly neglected and was very frightened.

In my time, there was piped water first into the wash-house and then in 1955 into the house, but when my father was young the water was obtained from a spring that came up in the wooded bank on the left of the mill driveway.

It was also to our advantage that my father should attend the weekly cattle markets, so on Monday mornings he dressed up with his stiff starched collar and front, which was attached to his shirt by collar studs and which he always cursed as he struggled to fasten them! He would then pursue his prospective customers. If a farmer bought a lot of cattle, which needed to be left at the market overnight, my father would get the order to provide the feed for them. I remember him once getting a huge order from a visiting circus - for the elephants' food!

The daily work of the mill started early, but when there was grinding to be done, which was of course very frequently, it started earlier because the flood gates had to be closed so that the water could build up, in order to provide sufficient power to drive the mill wheel. It was not possible to close them overnight, because of the danger of a sudden thunderstorm, which would have resulted in the mill being flooded. Even so, I often remember my father getting up in the middle of the night to attend to the flood gates and prevent a disaster.

The willow-girded pool itself was a centre for wildlife and in addition to our own ducks and geese, it also had its own visiting swans and herons. Water hens, coots, snipe and kingfishers were frequent visitors and also the resident owls played their part in keeping down the rats and mice, which were unfortunately present in all corn mills. The mill cats worked hard inside the mill and it was unheard of to use any form of poison.

In 1925, the mill pond was completely frozen over and my father gave a marvellous exhibition of his skills as a skater, which he had learnt as a youth in the last century, when the winters were colder and opportunities for skating more frequent. The water was relatively unpolluted and there was a large head of fish in the pool - my father told me that an eel trap was set at the waterfall but I cannot remember it operating.

The garden of Wistaston Manor ran down to the east side of the pool and many local people will remember the legend of the three young children, running down the garden path and falling into the water and being drowned. It was said that a monument was erected to their memory. Fortunately for the children, the story was quite untrue and the statue was a garden ornament of three cherubs. The story was invented by local parents to help keep their children away from the pool.

Before the advent of the Ford lorry, all the grain was delivered to the farms by horse and cart. We had a lovely brown Shire horse called Doll to pull the heavy loads of Indian meal, etc. The exit from the mill was just as it is today, with a sharp incline up from the mill yard to Nantwich Road. There was apparently a five-barred gate at the top of the bank, but this was removed to enable the horse to have a free run up the slope to the road. There was not much traffic on the road in those days, except for market days, when streams of sheep or cattle would be driven to the auctions. During the 19^th century, gaggles of geese were also brought for sale by Irishmen, who landed at Holyhead and slowly grazed their geese along the grass verges from Holyhead to the auction at Crewe.

The mill had its own blacksmith's forge and bellows and horses were shod on the premises. In addition, the mill was also a smallholding and owned fields on the other side of Nantwich Road, between Manor Avenue and Dane Bank. These were used mainly for cattle, but we also had pigs and a lot of chickens. In the summer we, like all Cheshire farmers, had our hay making and harvesting periods, during which time one of my jobs was to take ginger beer in large stone jars to the workers in the fields.

The running of the mill and the smallholding was very much a full-time family affair and work commenced at six and finished when it was too dark to see. There was no electricity and the only light was candlelight and an oil lamp in the house. Candles were put in primitive candlesticks made out of bat- shaped pieces of wood and a lid off a tin can. The handle of the candlestick was shaped to fit into holes, strategically placed in the upright supports of the mill beams.

The mill house had Victoria plum trees trained up its walls and there was also a big orchard with apple, pear, cherry and damson trees. Harvest time was when my mother got busy making jams and all the special preserves that would see the family through the winter. We also had a big vegetable garden, but it is the flower garden that I remember best. It was full of the cottage flowers and herbs, with their distinctive scents, which were so popular at the turn of the century.

My father told me that his grandfather would send him into the garden to gather certain herbs to make a special brew to cure his particular malady. Feverfew was said to be a cure for Migraine and of course there was always plenty of Comfrey. Primroses, Violets and Wood Anemones grew in profusion in the rather damp loamy soil.

1929 brought a lot of financial problems and the mill was taken over by a larger mill, Griffith Bros. of Chester. Then came the war in 1939 and my father worked alone and continued to do so until he was 83 years old (still by candlelight). He would never keep a customer waiting, unless maybe a bird or animal needed his protection from the cat or other predators.

At the age of 86 years he died whilst weeding in the garden and so ended a hard but very contented life and also the era of Wistaston Mill as a corn mill.

On the morning of the funeral, I awoke to find the garden full of cows, which had apparently escaped from the neighbouring fields. I like to think that they had really come to pay their last respects.