Middle Mill Weir - River Colne, Colchester, UK
N 51° 53.616 E 000° 54.066
31U E 355575 N 5751286
Middle Mill Weir is on the River Colne in Colchester. The weir is located alongside a waterwheel that was used by Middle Mill. The machinery for operating the sluice gates is still in place but looks to be out-of-service.
Waymark Code: WMPT8Z
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 10/17/2015
Views: 2
The sluice gear was manufactured by Riches & Watts Engineers in Norwich and is dated 1875.
There is a plaque adjacent to the weir and waterwheel that carries the following text:
Middle Mill Weir
A mill has stood on this site since the time of the Norman Conquest
"My grandfather Exekial, my father Wasey Chopping and Uncle
Percy ground the whitest flour in Essex here for over one hundred
years"
Richard Chopping, son
of Wasey Chopping, Miller
and Mayor of Colchester, 1922
Beneath this sign lies a time capsule buried when the Mill Weir was restored
by Colchester Borough Council and the Environment Agency in 2000AD.
The British History website tells us about Middle Mill:
Middle mill on the Colne outside Ryegate, the king's mill belonging to Colchester castle, was recorded c. 1101 when Henry I granted one third of it to St. Botolph's priory. The priory retained that third until the Dissolution, when it was granted to Sir Thomas Audley. It presumably escheated to the Crown on his death, and was thus reunited with the remaining two thirds of the mill. The mill descended with the other castle lands to Hope and Martha Gifford, and was conveyed to Francis Powell in 1725. It was bought by Charles Gray in 1757, and passed with the castle lands to the Round family.
The mill, a corn mill, was repaired by the keeper of the castle in 1300 and c. 1335; further repairs were carried out in 1367, but by 1381 the mill was unoccupied and in ruins. Between 1402 and 1405 Thomas Godstone built a new mill, a fulling mill perhaps with a corn mill, on the old site which he leased from the Crown. In 1575 the bailiffs alleged that the mill had been used as a fulling mill for some time, but it contained a corn mill in 1593 and 1632. It was a double corn and fulling mill in 1681, 1689, 1707, and c. 1750. John Wheeley, owner of the castle, repaired it c. 1690. In the 19th century it was a corn mill worked by members of the Chopping family; it had an auxiliary steam engine by 1886. In 1933 the millers sold out to Marriage's of East mill, who stripped out the machinery. The building was sold to the borough council the following year, and was demolished in the 1950s.