Flambards Mill

It is not known when the first mill at Flambards was erected, but it is likely that one of the mills mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 was on this site.

In “Meldreth Parish Records“, W M Palmer writes that the mill was held by the Veysie family in around 1300.

According to Palmer’s lecture on Richard Willowes, the mill was held by William Horsley c. 1700.

In the early 1840s, a new mill was built, probably on the site of an earlier mill.  It was advertised for sale by auction in 1844 as “a newly erected water corn mill on a never failing stream, with three pairs of French stones capable of working 50 sacks per week”.  The mill was sold along with the miller’s cottage and six acres of pasture land, much of which was later planted as orchard.  See the advertisements in our photo gallery on this page.

In 1871 the miller was Christopher Scowen.

Prior to 1879 the mill was converted so that the mill stones could be driven by steam as well as water.

In 1879 the mill was sold to local farmer Mr Charles Ellis for £1,200. At the time it was let to Samuel Jarman on a lease which expired in 1882.  Details of the sale are included in the photo gallery at the top of this page.

Samuel Jarman was still the miller in 1881.

Charles Ellis died in 1897 and ownership of the mill passed to his son, Hubert Oslar Shepherd Ellis, who still owned the mill in 1910, when the occupier was Nathan Driver.  In 1910 Valuation Office records were made for tax administration following the 1910 budget.  Known as the Land Values Duties returns or Lloyd George’s Domesday, they show the use of land and buildings in England and Wales.  The return for Meldreth is held by Cambridgeshire Archives.  The return lists Nathan Driver as the occupier of a “mill and building”.  In the 1911 census, he is listed simply as a “fruit grower”.

Unfortunately, the main mill building was destroyed by fire leaving only the chimney and the wheel-housing standing.  We believe that this fire took place c.1910.

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