History of Bromham Mill
Bromham Mill. Courtesy of Eileen Whitmore and Visual Impact
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There’s been a mill hereabouts since Saxon times. Water from the River Great Ouse turned the large wheel for hundreds of years.
In the past, the Mill was a self-sufficient community. The river that powered the machinery was full of wildlife. In the 1600s, the rent was partly paid with eels from the mill pond. There was a blacksmith’s shop, and the millers reared pigs, feeding them on apples from the orchard and sweepings of grain and flour. The millers made gear teeth out of apple wood, which was always available from the orchard.
By the 1920s, the water wheel could no longer supply enough power and the millers began to use a steam engine. In the 1930s, they turned to oil power.
In 1961, the water board carried out £14,000 of restoration work, but Quenbys, the millers, soon found that they could no longer make the business pay, and later moved to Turvey.
Bedfordshire County Council bought the Mill and the meadow in 1973. Then squatters moved in and a fire broke out, destroying the roof and the upper floor of the older eastern end. The Council carefully restored the Mill, and opened it to the public in 1985, but within 20 years it was only open to visitors on Sundays and bank holidays in the summer.
In 2006, The Bromham Millers, a social enterprise, bid successfully for a long lease on the Mill. The Development timeline shows our progress, past and proposed.
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