BICKINGTON. BY THE OLD MILL STREAM . . .
Apart from the town of Newton Abbot itself where in the olden days the Lemon was literally part of its lifeblood, possibly this small and rather scattered village had more work for the river than anywhere else in the heyday of the watermill. Nellie Dean and her beau may have dreamed by the old mill stream, but Devonians, who have earned their bread for hundreds of years through the mills and their streams and leats, certainly didn’t have much time to do so. Many of the early mills in Devon were quite small and could be worked by one or two members of the family, parish apprentices, and labourers, the occupier devoting the rest of his time to farming.
There are not very many Devon mills actually recorded in Domes day book, only about 94 in contrast to 368 in Somerset, and most of them are located east of the Exe, possibly because the watermill was a technical improvement which had advanced from the east and had not yet ousted the hand mill from most of the rest of Devon, but it is also possible that the mills listed in Domesday may not have been comprehensive. The mill on the manor would be mentioned because it had become usual for the lord to let or farm out his monopoly mill rights to a miller, and the rental therefore was part of his wealth, and
of course all farmers in the respective manors had to take their corn to the manor mills to be ground so that the lord might take his due. Both wind and water power have been used extensively to drive mills in Devon, but the water wheels, with which we are concerned, in our River Lemon, were of two types — overshot, where the water was carried to the top of the wheel by a launder driving it from above, and the undershot driven by the force of the water thrusting against the lower vanes. Other variations were pitch back and high or low breasted.
The most interesting and important function of rivers since man first came to this earth, was the turning of water wheels to make power, above all, as we have seen, for the mills which dotted the banks of rivers. As this is not an academic study, I do not intend to go into the technical details of these, sufficient to say that to get the surface speed from slow moving shafts, there had to be giant stones of varying textures — and please remember to use the proper terms of reference in this connection! You BRUISE oats, CRUSH barley
and GRIND wheat!
Returning to the mills in which we are interested — Bickington was the first the Lemon reached in the village. The building still stands beside a dry leat below the built-up flyover for the new road. Here at one time flock was made which was used for the stuffing of horses’ collars, the seats of furniture and so on. It was made from old rags which were torn up and processed, in this case the wheel drove what is called a devil or spiked mill for tearing the rags before manufacture.
Mr Gordon Johns, who went to live at Bickington in 1899, told me: ‘My grandfather worked the mill, then my father, and then my father and I. It was known as The Mills, Bickington. We made flock for mattresses and wool for horses’ saddles, and collars. The cylinder of the devil machine had about five to six hundred very sharp steel spikes set in apple wood and it travelled at 500 revs per minute. The best saddler’s wool was made from Dutch carpets which came from Holland in bales of about five hundredweights. There was a large washing machine and a carding machine with several rollers and thousands of very fine teeth on them. The wool from this machine was made chiefly for saddlers, the best in the Mill. There was a large dust extracting machine, the dust being sold to the village people for their gardens at 2s 6d a cwt, a splendid manure for all green vegetables. The Mill was a four storey building, built of limestone, with walls about two feet thick. The water wheel was some fifteen feet diameter and about four feet wide. It was between two and three hundred years old and well built. We regulated the flow of water at aweir in the River Lemon close to Yeo Farm. ’
The next mill was called Lemon ford. This once stood on the old part of the Ashburton to Newton Abbot road, but it was totally destroyed by fire and only the bare bones of foundations remain among trees and brambles, although the old leat can still be seen in the fields, running in a loop and back into the river.
Mr Tom Daw of Kingskerswell told me the story of how it was burnt down in 1881 when his grandfather was miller. The circumstances can only be described as bizarre. The launder, or wooden trough, which carried the water down over the wheel and inside the building, had a lever controlled by a piece of cord to prevent the water running over the wheel when it was not required to turn. On this particular night the rats chewed through this cord, thus releasing the lever. The water started to run down the launder and turned the wheel which started the millstones to grind as there was no corn between their surfaces, they became red hot and set the mill alight. Before help could come, it had burned to the ground.
‘Often a mill had to work all through the night,’ Mr Daw said, ‘otherwise we couldn’t cope with all the work, and sometimes we had to get up because we heard the wheel running too fast, and then at other times during a drought, we could only work for two or three hours. The 3ft 6in stones ground about a hundredweight an hour and there were times when we had to pinch more water from the river by putting stones down to drive it to our own particular leat! ’ Shades of those thirteenth century water thieves! I asked him what killed the grain mills and he said, ‘Like so many things — progress, if you like to call it that! The coming of the
combine. In the old days when the thresher had to go all round the parish the grain was dry ... now we had to buy expensive machinery to dry it, put in hammers going at speed and not choking, so in a very short time the mills disappeared. I can remember forty-five at least at one time in the Ashburton area alone .. . they seemed to go almost over night.’ And so they may have done, but the Lemon still flowed on, its work
load lessened. It flowed next past the old pub now called the Dart moor Halfway, its name coming from the fact that it stands half way between the old stannary town of Ashburton and Newton Abbot. It is possible that before the seventeenth century farm cottages with small holdings stood there, but when it became a pub it was visited by the travelling brewer from Newton Abbot and he added the steps on the side in the eighteenth century. Actually the rough stone and cob of the original is hard to date and there is no mention in the county records of the building, but I did find its position on an 1813 map in the county record office — not actually named as such. Mr Jimmy Young of Crediton, an expert on old inns, told me it was most likely used as a drovers’ stop on the route from the moor to Newton Abbot market, and Mr Brian Huggins, the landlord, said there are still signs of the old dormitory where they slept, above the present day bar. It was too a ‘change house’ for the horses when the small coach business developed on the main Plymouth to Exeter route from Newton Abbot. These horses were also available for private carriages and this brought prosperity to the inn which was eventually taken over by the Heavitree Brewery. Before we leave Bickington there are two local people to visit. Mrs Waterman, who now lives at Halshanger Cross, was born and lived as a small child in Goodwill cottage near the banks of the river in the village. My brother and I often went fishing in the Lemon, and once he came home with an eel wrapped round the handlebars of his bike. He carefully unravelled it and dragged the hook out of its mouth, putting it in the pond as company for the goldfish! But in the morning it had gone. Had it been stolen by birds or had its relatives collected it we wondered ... or perhaps the call of the wild attracted it back to its mating ground.’ She went on to tell me that often they waded up stream. ‘Parts of the river were very deep, above our thighs. We pulled out all sorts of rubbish, but no fish. The river had a peculiar smell of its own, rather like dead fish, or how I thought they would smell, mixed up with the stagnant odour of cow dung and urine!’
I feel certain the old river had watched generation after generation of small children doing exactly the same, long may they continue to do so. But without doubt our best well known local character is Owen
Caunter, at the moment preparing his own book of stories in dialect, at which he is a past master. He has appeared on television and radio many times for although he is mainly a farmer, he is also an expert on the ancient and genuine method of cider making, which he has often demonstrated in public, and a gifted thatcher and corn dolly maker. He lives at Bonemill, once called Chipley Mill, and here they made the serge or Kersey for which Devon was so famous. The mill employed 150 people and he showed me the crooks driven into the beams where the old machines had stood. At the end of his garden runs the river, and the weir which controlled the leat for the next mill downstream, Ingsdon, at one time belonging to Miller Thorne. Here, although the house and buildings still stand beside the leat, which runs full and free, and the high lift on the building which raised the sacks of corn can be seen, unfortunately the very day before a preservation order was due to be put on the wheel itself, it was removed. The river is now reinforced by the Kester Brook which joins it at the foot of Prairie field, belonging to my neighbour, Lionel Stanbury, who farms along the banks of the river for more than a mile. Owen told me the Kester rises from many springs —from Hole and Burne Combe and Farlacombe, through Washing Pool where it is said the devil used to wash his shirt out at midnight, then go back up the lane to an old pollard oak where he hung it to dry near Hole
Farm. But it is time for us to follow the river as it now hurries on down to its next job of work.
HOLBEAM AND OGWELL MILL
Whether these two mills are really the most interesting historically one cannot be certain, but we do have more details of their past than of the others. In the field opposite our house is the weir which controls the leat to Holbeam, or Hobbim as it appeared, as a flour mill, in William the Conqueror’s Domesday book, to be joined by yet another stream, on some maps described as the Blackford Brook, by others as Barham.
As to the mill, I can do no better than quote from the Torquay Times dated Christmas Day 1935, kindly lent to me by Mr B. Loder: ‘Tucked away down a tiny Devon lane on the banks of a delightful little river, the Lemon, just above the bridge where river and woodlands of Bradley manor meet, two and a half miles from Newton Abbot, stands Holbeam mill. This ancient building, old enough to be mentioned in Domesday book, at a casual glance appears to be just an ordinary smithy. In those far off Saxon days it was a flour mill. About 200 years ago it was converted and machinery installed to produce knives and fish hooks for the Newfoundland cod fish industry. About 80 years later it was taken over by a family of blacksmiths who added tilt hammers to its outfit and commenced the manufacture of agricultural edge tools, scythes, bill hooks, mattocks and suchlike implements. This business has survived against the competition of mass production and is still being carried on by members of the same family. These blacksmith craftsmen in steel are working today with the same primitive machinery and the same time honoured methods, forging and tempering on open fires, good honest steel tools which they sell at Newton Abbot every market day. Long may they flourish. ’
Sadly they only ‘flourished’ until 1943, when the Loder family, as they were called, had to give up owing to ill health after three generations of working the mill. But many of their beautifully fashioned tools,, bearing their name, are still cherished in Devon farmhouses. In those days there were two wheels, one to drive the hammers which beat out the material or metal, and another for blowing the fire to heat it. As for the knives and fish hooks made for the fishing industry in earlier days, these too had been of such fine workmanship that a Sheffield mill had tried to imitate and sell its own wares under the mark ‘Stockman — Warranted’. Mr Stockman, who then owned Holbeam, was so angry he sued the swindlers for damages; and obtained £600 from them — a large sum in those days I suppose. Actually Holbeam was one of the last hammer mills to survive in England, and when it was finally abandoned, a small army of men arrived from London to take down the machinery, which they did with infinite care, numbering all the parts so it could be set up in the
South Kensington Science Museum, where it can now be seen. Today it is difficult to imagine, as you stand in the beautifully furnished hall of the mill, with one of the graceful Loder billhooks above the fireplace, that the building once resounded with all the noise of the machinery, where heavy hammers beat out tools and a furnace blazed. Mr Loder told me that his family, which he had traced back for 309 years, had always been interested in tool making — but his clearest memory as a child was when they cleaned out the leat once a year and then fished for trout in the clear water. I remember too during the war, when the Germans had bombed Newton Abbot station, the plane came right out round where we were standing in the paddock by the mill. We thought it was going to land, but the pilot just waved to us and flew off.’ When I asked him why he thought Loder tools were so highly prized, he said ‘Nowadays a hook or similar tool is made only of steel. We made them of iron which would literally wear forever. The iron was opened up and a layer of steel for the actual cutting edge welded in so you got an even flow as you cut. ’
The present owners of the mill are Lt Commander John Holdsworth, Gentleman Usher to the Queen, and his wife. Recently he was High Sheriff of Devon and to celebrate his appointment he held a garden party in the gardens of the mill among a riot of summer flowers, the sound of the river on one side, and on the other the rhythmic dripping of the leat on the remaining mill wheel. This garden, fashioned over the years with love and dedication, was a perfect setting for the marquee and the silver band, all of which must have confused the mallard who nests each year at the side of the leat, and the dipper who roosts above the front door, sometimes flying round the dining room, possibly checking the guest list! The Holdsworth family can trace their ancestors to John de Haldeworth in 1275, the name acquiring its present form in 1541, the
Rev. Robert Holdsworth, vicar of Modbury being the first of the name encountered in Devon. But to prove once more that truth is stranger than fiction, during the reign of the first Elizabeth one of her sheriffs of Devon was Richard Reynell who lived in the parish of Ogwell — as does John Holdsworth in the reign of the second Elizabeth!
The site of the last mill in a rural setting is Ogwell, but sadly nothing of the original seventeenth century house with its Dutch gable remains. There is only a small modern bungalow complete with TV mast, a few stones, and an old arch to show where the original building stood. But I am indebted to Mr H. Webber of Rose Cottage, Ogwell, whose family have lived in the village for over a hundred years, for some further details of this mill. I remember a family called Loder living there as flour millers, I went to school with the children, but just before 1909 when the manor and parish was sold up by Robert Scratton, the family went to
America and I’ve heard nothing of them since. But when I was working on the road to the mill just before the last war, I remember a lorry coming and collecting up a big load of scrap iron from the ruins of the wheel and so on. I heard it was sold to Germany for munitions so maybe it was thrown back at us as bombs! ’ He lent me a booklet dated 6 October 1898 on the History of Ogwell in which the following description of the mill is given. ‘On the banks of the River Lemon and near the boundary line of the parish is situated Ogwell Mill in the Bradley Woods, of great antiquity and originally a monastery. The old mill is nestled amid the
most lovely scenery in South Devon and is a frequent resort during the summer months of tourists from all parts. In the vicinity are several lofty hills from which fine views can be obtained. The celebrated mass of marble full of madrepore is situated in the limestone chain on this property in the Vale of Ogwell near Chercombe Bridge, West hill. The marble is composed of secondary limestone and forms a part of the grand chain which intersects the district. In a part of this hill near White Rock a splendid mass of stone containing madrepore corals, eucrinites and other animal remains was discovered many years ago by Mr Sharland of Torquay.’ All of which bears out the memories of Mrs Pope who lived there as a child and remembers that in the Victorian period people used to take what were known as feather fossils from the river and polish
them to make up into brooches much in fashion then.
But before the first world war the main attraction of the mill was its picturesque appearance and people came from miles around to paint and photograph it. You could also get a first class cream tea, but this stopped during the years of the war. Later the owner decided to open it again, and all was prepared, when an inspection was made by the Council to make sure the premises were suitable for public use. They were not,
in fact they were declared dangerous and unsafe and indeed shortly after, during a severe storm, part of the house did collapse, the gable end surviving only for a short time until that too became a ruin. Mrs Woolner of Bradley has a very interesting theory about this mill. ‘Probably the Ogwell mill mentioned in Domesday is not the one on this particular site for this mill was worked by a leat which still runs, and the development of these was much later, during the seventeenth century. Prior to that a mill had direct use of the river,’ and to emphasise her point she told me that lately she had found a pile of enormous stones lower down river. I am fairly certain this is the site of the original mill and that this almost cyclopian masonry, which at first sight appears to be a tumble of natural rock, is in actual fact the remains of the old mill pond which they made before leats to act as a dam, and then carried the water over the wheel in a launder, or put them directly into the river and undershot, in other words the water pushed the wheel from below, which was really most uneconomic. This site as such is emphasised by the fact that an old lane goes up the other side from these rocks towards the village, but there is no corresponding lane this side, the manorial mills for this bank ail being down in Newton Abbot.’ An interesting and entirely feasible theory.
A RIVER AT MY GARDEN’S END
Just before we go on to Bradley House and then become urbanised, let me quote Jonathan Swift who had always wanted ‘A river at my garden’s end, a Terrace walk and half a rood of land set out to plant a wood.' Well the first I have, over the last I have had to compromise by planting as many trees in my small plot as possible. I fear it is certainly not a wood. But I do know what it must be like to live in a mill for we can hear the river twenty four hours of the day and judge its temper by the sound. When we first came to live here nearly three decades ago, there were otters, particularly in the area of the weir which, like many others, stored water for the mill a quarter of a mile down river. Now, with these mills gone, many of the weird have fallen into disrepair, and the deep pools have vanished. When we had the severe drought I thought if only the weirs could be repaired we should have a plentiful supply of water for a dry summer, and also encourage the return of the otters and trout. I am thankful to say otter hunting no longer takes place, the only pity that it has ceased being the fact that they did kill some of the mink which have lately bedevilled the river. The redoubtable centenarian Major Mott hunted the hounds in the days I remember. At one time they were kept at Glazebrook in South Brent under the master Major Green, and were said to be the oldest pack in Devon, possibly in England, foxes also being hunted by the same pack called the Dartmoor. Mr Retallick told me he had not seen an otter for many years: ‘We used to have one come up from Westabrook under the bridge. You could tell where he’d been because there were a few rocks in the middle of the river all clean with no moss where he’d crawled over them. When I was twelve I remember a trapper telling me of an otter travelling from this brook to Langworthy across the fields, going from stream to stream only when it was a heavy dew on the grass, they travel up river like herons.’ And a pair of these nest every year near our house. Often I have seen five or six in a field, hunched round in a semicircle by the river like aged directors at a board meeting. Then one will give a kind of half hearted hop, subside again, and gradually, one by one, they take off, an ungainly business usually accompanied by a stream of white bird lime! But once airborne they have a graceful, effortless flight, gliding upwards on warm thermals, their wings stiffly outstretched, then turning upstream, fly on, showing the weather coming from the moor is mild and calm, otherwise they would stay in a low, sheltered pasture near where the river slowly winds. Mr Retallick has herons too: ‘They stand on one leg watching till my neighbour’s car leaves the mill below, then they fly down and take the fish from the ornamental pond! I bet he wonders where they’ve gone! You can see those birds working it all out. ’ Sadly now I never see kingfishers which used to dart all summer over the river like bright jewels, and Mr Bath, local historian and keen fisherman, told me ‘Once when I was fishing I saw a hole in the bank opposite, out came a kingfisher. It flew off, returning later making a peculiar kind of twittering noise. The youngsters stuck their heads out of the hole, then came out and perched on a root and the parent fed them with tiny fish. I didn’t care if I didn’t catch anything myself that day — just to see that was enough.’ And talking of fish, a newspaper cutting of July 1972 states that 1500 fish were caught in the River Lemon above Newton Abbot according to the Devon River Authority’s annual report. The fish included five adult migratory trout, 428 salmon parr and 1035 brown trout, all of which were later returned to the river below Newton Abbot.
All of which reminded me of the old couplet about fish in Devon, The Teign for salmon, the Dart for peel, Ford leat for trout and the Lemon for eel!’ This last being borne out by Mr Cowell of Newton Abbot, who told me as a boy when he went to visit his grandfather at Wolborough House for holidays, during May and June he would go down the garden to where the river ran and come back with a bucketful of elvers. Mostly in our part of the river there are small brown trout. In the spring a wet fly is best to use for when the river is high the water is rapid and boisterous and only here and there will a dry fly have much chance of floating for more than a second or two. Mill leats provide a marvellous sport in the dog days of summer when the usual water courses are shrunk with drought. I once caught a 14 ounce trout with a blue bottle, very unsporting to the purist I suspect! I also caught a swallow as it swooped through the air to tease the dogs, as I was casting. Fortunately I managed to get the barb out of its beak and it flew off, apparently unharmed. We have a badger sett, whose whereabouts I shall not reveal for obvious reasons. I have no doubt that successive generations have lived there long before man came to gas them, and it is a tribute to their ingenuity that they have survived being hunted by dogs, shot at, trapped, baited and now gassed. Normally they are creatures of the night, but if you are lucky enough to see one jogging along like a belated reveller, they do look much like small bears. I have watched them come down to the Lemon to drink, and marvelled, looking at their setts, at the amount of stones, rock and shale they can shift. I am delighted it is at least illegal to dig or trap them.
As long ago as 1850 the actual so called sport of badger baiting was prohibited, I’m sorry to say this was very much practised before in the smile on her beak.
Devon.
Foxes too abound. One hot summer afternoon I was lucky enough to see five cubs playing like kittens in the wood. I froze where I stood and although they looked straight at me, for nearly an hour they went on gambolling while I stayed entranced, cramped, but determined not to move. Later I saw their mother slip down the river bank and bathe in the water, rolling over, splashing and snapping at the spray just like a dog.
Hares are plentiful. I watch them in March, dancing, boxing and carrying on in the approved mad fashion, then sobering up, combing their ears to make them shine like the girls brush their hair. Sometimes, if I see one before he sees me, I walk towards him just for the delight in watching him suddenly crouch down flat so that it is almost impossible to see him. Perhaps as I pass he will stay where he is, not because he is confident I won’t hurt him, but simply because hates get to know that often to stay completely still is safer than running. Each year a pair of tame mallards, escaped from some park I suppose, build their nest in the river bank below the paddock, the male all swank and green sheen comes up to the yard when he hears the rattle of the hens’ bucket. The female is a very sorry exponent of women’s lib. following demurely behind, quietly waiting her turn, never pushing, and each year I am again amazed at the way in which those tiny balls of black fluff are launched on the water in a kind of hassle of hysteria, Ma cruising along behind, or in front, as the occasion demands, keeping up a running commentary of quacks like a television announcer at the boat race, showing off so you can almost see Inevitably all rivers must have bridges to carry the roads or lanes,
and ours is no exception. This particular one was once a beautiful sight, a typical hump back pack horse bridge, widened for carriages on their way to Torbryan no doubt, but still good to look at. Then it was knocked down by the constant passing of a four wheeled 24 ton lorry, the blocks of granite plunging into the stream below. I suppose eventually it will be replaced, possibly by some horror of breeze blocks and cement, although I have done all I could with preservationists and so on, saying in despair ‘God Save our Gracious Bridge’. Even the hedges and banks are being bulldozed, destroying this beautiful landscape which was probably created as far back as 1150 with its lanes leading down to lonely farms, the double hedgerows now showing where possibly the original pack horse tracks ran, and if in your piece of hedge you can count ten different species of plant, then it has probably stood there for a thousand years. Our stretch of river has given us moments of panic too, apart from when it rises with great rapidity, making me dash upstairs with any portable valuables, sure this time it will not ‘stay ’way from my door! ’ But the worst fright we had was when I espied a surveyor with rods, poles etc., on the banks and discovered a reservoir site was threatened. I fought a long and tedious battle, I think with hindsight, unnecessarily for in all probability the rock formation in Bradley woods would not have been suitable for the proposed dam, so at the moment the valley and woods remain peaceful and brimming over with interest and history.
BRADLEY WOODS
Going in this end from Chercombe bridge through the kissing gate by the half timbered house, I am reminded of the fact that once two cottages stood here, in which Mr Baker of Newton Abbot told me his gran lived. She too provided cream teas for the weary traveller, and bottles of Ross’s lemonade. She had a tame otter that came into the kitchen for food, but often the cottages were flooded and her first thought when this happened was to move her pig to higher ground in the wood where she tied it to a tree, for in those days most cottagers would not have existed but for their pig so his safety was almost as important as that of the family itself!
