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| Introduction Eling Tide Mill is a water mill that harnesses the power of the tide to grind wheat into wholemeal flour. Situated on the edge of Southampton Water beside the renowned New Forest, there has been a mill on the site for over 900 years, although it has had to be rebuilt several times, with the current building being some 230 years old. Tide mills were once an important part of the economy of many countries, such as Great Britain and the United States of America - the latter having many hundreds of tide mills on the eastern coast from the 17th to 19th centuries. Tidal power was harnessed in this fashion not only for milling flour, but for everything from sawing lumber and operating the bellows and hammers in ironworks, to manufacturing paper and cotton, to grinding spices, pepper and gunpowder. Before the advent of the steam engine they were the one kind of large-scale mill that was pretty much guaranteed to be able to run 365 days of the year. Unfortunately they suffered far more than the river and wind mills after they were gradually abandoned in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and very few survive even as derelicts. There are only five tide mills open to the public in the entire United Kingdom, and none at all in the U.S.A. Eling Tide Mill, although abandoned in the 1940s, had the great good fortune to survive until it was restored between 1975 and 1980, at which time it re-opened as both a working mill, and a museum to this part of our industrial heritage. It is the only fully working and productive tide mill in the United Kingdom, once again producing flour as it had throughout the last Millennium. It is, in fact, one of only two productive tide mills in the entire world (to the best of our knowledge), and the only one producing what it was built to produce. |
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| Origins We do not actually know when the Mill was first built, but the earliest surviving reference to it is in the Domesday Book - a survey of all England - in 1086 AD. It is possible that it may even go back to Roman times (c.200-400 AD), but any evidence of this will be underneath the Mill and its dam. |
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| The Heyday of the Mill The Mill was always owned by the Lord of the Manor of Eling, and originally this was the King of England as Eling was a royal manor. In the early 1200s, however, the manor and Mill were sold off by King John. They went through various hands until 1382 AD, when the title - and with it the Mill - was purchased by the Bishop of Winchester and given to a school he was founding (along with many other properties) to be a source of income. This school - Winchester College, the famous public school - owned the Mill from 1382 to 1975 AD, though they did not run it directly, but rather leased it out on long leases. Although a very small operation by today's standards, in the past it was not just a small local business. While some of the grain for milling was from local farms, more used to be brought several hundred miles round the coast in barges from the Eastern side of England; when the tide was in, the barges could be sailed up Southampton Water, into Eling Creek, and right up to the Mill. Maximum possible output, running both waterwheels and all four sets of stones at full speed for both tides, could have been about 4 tonnes of flour per day. |
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| Rebuilds The Mill has had to be rebuilt many times over the centuries, the last time being in the 1780s when it (and the dam) were completely rebuilt after a bad series of storms and floods. The current building is therefore in excess of 220 years old, although it has been on the same site and always a tidal powered flour mill for at least 940 years. The milling machinery was last replaced in 1898 AD, when the old wooden undershot wheels and main gearing were replaced by cast iron Poncelet-type wheels (which increased the efficiency) and cast iron axles and gears. Basically, though, it still has the same parts working the same way as it always did. |
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The End of the Mill ...
almost |
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| Resurrection In 1975 the Mill was bought by New Forest District Council (the local government body) who began work to save it from collapse, and to restore it as a site of some industrial archaeological importance. Eling Tide Mill Trust was then set up to oversee the final phase of the restoration, and to administer the Mill as a working mill/museum after the Mill reopened in 1980. The mill originally had two waterwheels, each driving two sets of millstones. We have restored one wheel with one set of millstones and left the other side un-restored so that people can see the machinery without modern safety screens around it. Today we are one of only five tide mills open to the public in the United Kingdom, the others being: The House Mill (Bromley by Bow) in London, Thorrington Mill in Essex, Carew Mill in Pembrokeshire, and Woodbridge Mill in Suffolk. |
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| The Mill and the Tide The Mill is built on the seaward side of a dam across a tidal river, about 100m upstream of where the river empties into the sea (well, Southampton Water - which opens into the English Channel). The river (Bartley Water) is very small, and doesn't have enough water flow on its own to run a mill, but it is tidal for about 3km inland. When the flooding tide comes in, it pushes open one-way gates (the 'sea gates' or 'sea hatches') at the other end of the dam from the Mill, and fills up the 3km stretch of the river upstream of the dam, just as if the dam and Mill were not there. This 3km stretch of tidal river is our millpond, and when it is full (at high tide), the water in it is about 95 percent sea water and 5 percent fresh river water. The mill cannot work at this point for two reasons: first, the tide is also high on the Mill side so there is no flow of water, and secondly the waterwheel is largely underwater itself, and waterwheels don't work underwater (too much drag). When the tide turns and starts to go out again (the ebbing tide), the water on the mill-side (i.e. the seaward side) of the dam drops, gradually uncovering the waterwheel, but the sea gates close, trapping the water in the millpond, so the level in the millpond stays at the high tide level (which varies from day to day). There is a sluice gate blocking the channel through the dam from the millpond to the waterwheel, and at this point this gate is closed. When the tide has dropped to the point where it is half-way down the waterwheel, if the sluice gate is opened, water flows through from the pond (still at high tide level) and starts to turn the wheel. However, the lower half of the wheel is still underwater, which means there is a lot of drag, and the wheel will only turn slowly. At Eling we run it at this point if visitors are here at that time so that they can at least see everything moving, but the flour made is too fine (the slower the mill turns, the finer the flour), so the Mill wasn't used at this point in the old days when it was just a working mill rather than a visitor attraction. “Proper” milling starts when the tide falls to a point completely below the bottom of the waterwheel. When this happens, the sluice gate is raised (only a few centimetres), and the jet of water from the millpond strikes the lower blades of the waterwheel, spinning it round. The bottom of the wheel is well above low tide level, so we work from when the ebbing tide gets to the bottom of the wheel, through the time that the tide continues out to low water, on as the flooding tide starts to come back up, until the rising tide reaches the bottom of the waterwheel and starts to interfere with the running, slowing it down again. This gives 5 hours of proper running, making good flour, each tide. There are two tides a day, so the Mill can work properly for 10 hours a day, in two 5 hour shifts, each shift starting 12 and a half hours after the start of the last one. For the sake of visitors, we can run the Mill slowly as the tide rises up the waterwheel, until it gets to the axle, at which point there is too much drag to run at all. Again, the Mill would not have been used like that in the old days as the flour is too fine when running at these slow speeds. Eventually the flooding tide reaches a height where its level is higher than that of the remaining water in the millpond, the pressure of the tide forces the sea gates open, the millpond begins to refill as the tide continues to rise, and the cycle repeats. |
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Milling |
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The Stones The stones can mill somewhere between 60 t0 90 KG of wholemeal flour each hour, however as Eling Tide Mill currently only mills and sells eight tonnes a year we produce far less than our potential maximum output. |
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The Grain Flour of the Forest |
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Glossary |
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