Watermill Blog -  Site Visit
12th June 2008

The team spent a certain amount of time tidying up this morning, ready for a site visit by the Local Authority Conservation Officer and the Case Officer for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The latter is our regular advisor Tim Booth who was here on Tuesday.

This watermill blog is happy to report that the Conservation Officer seemed impressed by what we have achieved so far and happy that we are making a good job of the repairs. She particularly liked seeing the waterwheel run, as do the rest of us.

Dick worked on the final assembly of the sack hoist pinion, making sure that the pinion teeth were all set firmly to the correct depth.

It only remains to peg the teeth into position, a job that will require a larger drill than we have on site. Dave has volunteered to do the drilling in his home workshop. Once that is done we can start to re-assemble the drive in the mill.

Jonathan turned his attention to the steps down into the basement of the mill. The top step has been loose for as long as we have been working here, so he has lifted all the bricks and relaid them with fresh lime mortar.

Max and Dave laid a replacement floor board along the north side of the stone floor. The original had decayed due to damp penetrating the wall.

They had to do a fair amount of tidying up just to get at the job and made an interesting discovery.

There used to be a grain bin in the corner of the stone floor. We knew that we had one side of a grain bin that we could not account for amongst the bits and pieces but the tidy up revealed another side. Once they knew what to look for the witness marks on the floor were obvious.

Martyn, Headley and John used the last of our stock of pea gravel to finish off the area around the penstock valve and generally made the site look nice and tidy.

ichard arrived late but managed some more work on the repair of the casement windows from the front of the mill.

By the end of the day the last two glazing bars had been made and just needed trimming to suit the outside profile of the frame.

With a bit of luck this window can go back into the wall next week ready for glazing and painting. A start can then be made on the similar window from the other side of the door.

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