Bourne Archive: BAEM: Mill Drove

http://boar.org.uk/ghiwxs7BAEM(pic9b.htm                    Latest edit 8 Feb 2010.  

Text, page and picture ©R.J.PENHEY 2010. 

The Bourne Archive Gallery

The East Field Windmills, from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.

This is a detail, covering the western end of Mill Drove in Bourne Parish, taken from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825. The field grey colour code indicates land worked directly as part of the Bourne Abbots estate. The very faint pink code indicates land held by others, copyhold of the Manor of Bourne Abbots. The land of Nutto field, Dyke is to the north of the East field and the end of Meadowgate is at bottom left.

 

Mill drove runs west to east across the pre-enclosure open field, Bourne East Field. It joins the turnpike road, now A15 to Meadow Drove. Mill Drove gives the appearance of a road laid out as a result of the Enclosure Act of 1766 but it may be older.

Mill Drove, or Mill Road as it is called in the estate maps, will have been named after the Earl of Exeter’s windmill at about grid reference TF097210. By 1825, the earls had been promoted to marquis. The maps of both Lord Exeter’s estate (EEM) and the Bourne Abbots estate (BAEM) show it as a post mill. In the EEM, it is shown in a plot colour-coded as being managed directly as part of the estate. This mill did not survive into the 20th century. For example, it is absent from the 1906 map in Lanes p. 5. This is not the mill which many people remember as Wherry’s Mill or Tom Jones’s mill.

The second mill shown by the BAEM appears as a tower mill, which it is well known as having been. It stood just to the north of Mill Drove, behind the first house but was reached from North Road. Its stump just failed to survive into the 21st century, having been used as part of Mr. Jones’s antiques shop. His father had been the last to work it as a mill. It was struck by lightening in 1915. The EEM shows the small plot of land on which it stood but not the mill itself. Photographs of it may be found in Lanes p. 16 and McGregor pp.136 & 137.

Index of samples from the map       More about the East Field               More about mill Drove          Archive Contents