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Invented
by the Greeks in the 1st century BC the water wheel was
probably introduced by the Romans. Beautiful distinctive
buildings, perfectly adapted to role and place, mills,
with their associated wheels, leats, sluices and ponds,
were once two a penny. Now so many of those that remain
are dilapidated, presumably owing to the high cost of
renovation.
By
the time of the Domesday Book over 5,000 mills were
recorded. Mills had a number of uses such as for
grinding corn, cloth fulling, flax for sailmaking, for
powering forge hammers and saws, making paper, snuff,
gunpowder, needles, silk and flour. Depending on the
size of the watercourse, the velocity of the water and
the work to be accomplished, different types of wheel
were used, such as overshot, undershot, breastshot, and
Poncelet. Turbines were introduced in the mid 19th
century.
The
first mills had stone foundations but were of wattle and
daub, timber and thatch, which was gradually replaced
with stone or brick. Many mills were burnt down, the
friction caused by wooden machinery igniting explosive
flour dust. The
Industrial Revolution saw the exploitation of water to
power huge mills pioneered by Richard Arkwright along
the Derwent at Cromford and at Belper in Derbyshire,
soon to be eclipsed by coal fired steam engines.
According
to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB),
there were less than 60 mills in the UK which were
working commercially in 1997. At the start of the
century there had been 15,000.
SUSSEX
MILLS | WATER
MILLS | MILLS
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South-East
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