Whitemill, Dorset

Whitemill, Dorset

There are references to the “Whitemill” (the building of ‘A Bridge on the River Stour adjacent to the White Mill) in the year 1175 and again in 1326. What is, perhaps, significant is that other places appear to have taken their names from Whitemill (Whitemill Farm, Whitemill Bridge) rather than the mill taking its name from the village. In 1326 we find a deed: “John Chyke to Peter le Boyt – all his tenements at Wytemull… together with part of his mill” which hints that the mill may once have been “Wytemull Mill”.

It is possible that an earlier building on the site, presumably of timber framed construction, might have been limewashed. A more likely explanation ties in with the fact that a former chalk pit (now the car park) behind the mill, and that the west end of the building appears to stand on an artificial island made largely from chalk. So it wouldn’t just have been the mill that was white, the whole area would have been white from all the chalk.

The mill was rebuilt in 1776 on much older foundations, on a site that is older still. The present mill worked under water power until 1866 when a severe winter flood breached the diversionary works in the river so severely that they were deemed beyond economic repair. By this time the miller was also the local baker so, rather than simply closing the mill, he converted one half of it to run from a portable steam engine in order to keep his bakehouse supplied with flour. Commercial milling however appears to have ended with the flood.

With the retirement of the last miller, around the end of the Nineteenth century, the working life of the mill came to an end and the millstones came to rest. After the turn of the century, the tenancy changed hands a couple of times in quick succession and the building spent the next 85 years rotting away as little more than a farm shed. Whitemill, along with the rest of the Kingston Lacy estates, was bequeathed to the National Trust by Ralph Bankes in 1982, but it wasn’t until 1994 that the Trust found the resources (£300,000) to begin the painstaking conservation of the property.

The body of the current mill is built of brick, but the Wheelchamber is of quality stone construction. This stonework dates, we are told, to sometime in the fourteenth century, around the period when the Duke of Lancaster held the manor as a grant from the King. It is clear that when it came to the 1776 re-build, the builders considered that the power-plant was good enough to retain even though the superstructure (probably timber framed) was ruined. This fourteenth century dating is reinforced by the discovery of timbers in the foundations, during the underpinning of the river end wall, which have been radio-carbon dated to the same era. It is probable that the current mill is simply the last in a long line of rebuilds on the same foundations.

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