Building record 7323/1/1 - Snorscomb Mill

The first unequivocal reference to a mill at Snorscomb was around 1720, although there was likely to have been one here in the medieval period

{1} Snorscomb Mill has extensive earthwork survival. The earthworks are recorded on the modern OS map. The mill house has been converted to purely a dwelling.

{2} Emergency recording of the building in 1972 by Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group: Building 36ft by approx 21ft mainly stone exterior with brick lining; three floors; slate roof; overshot wooden water wheel 11ft 6in diameter; main vertical shaft 12in square; wooden spur wheel 6ft diameter; three pairs of millstones, two presumed French burr, one pair of barley stones all 4ft diameter; wooden crown wheel. The adjoining building was the original mill-house, plus various outbuildings.

{3} Observations on the ground-reduction to the south of the mill and miller’s house at Snorscomb
revealed only late nineteenth-century deposits relating to the mill in its final form.

There was no evidence of either the mill race or any other built features which can be related to the mill mentioned by Bridges in c1720, unless the overshot mill in its final plan-form does date that far back. The tithe map of 1816 probably shows the Mill mentioned by Bridges, and the basic plan-form is unlikely to have changed appreciably. Starmer’s 1972 assertion of a late conversion from breast-shot to over-shot has not been borne out.

In fact the evidence of clean, natural, undisturbed clay geology suggests that the current mill-race in no way represents a conversion or alteration of that sort but was an over-shot arrangement from the outset. The repositioned date-stone which dates the original shell of the miller’s-house buildings to 1821 may indicate the rebuilding of an earlier house known at least as early as Bridges. There was no evidence to support Starmer’s idea that the ground to the east of the mill dam had been raised, thus making the miller’s house so dark as to be almost uninhabitable. The geology indicates that in fact the miller’s house had always been cut into the natural slope of the land at that location.

<1> Foard G., 2000, Oral report to SMR, (checked) (Oral Report). SNN100433.

<2> Starmer G., 1973, Snorscomb Mill, (checked) (Note). SNN100523.

<3> Prentice, J., 2016, Archaeological monitoring of groundworks at Snorscomb Mill, Everdon, Northamptonshire, 2016, checked (Report). SNN110462.

<4> Crank, N. (Editor), 2017, South Midlands Archaeology (47), p. 37 (Journal). SNN111362.

Record last edited

Oct 8 2020 3:26PM