The Mill

It is recorded in the Domesday Book that a mill stood in this place. We venture to think that the miller who in 1339 paid rent of 'a quart of good ale and a bushel of flour' would approve. So indeed, would the farmers and villagers of those days waiting for their corn to be ground when the mill was a centre of social life.  Certainly, the stoneground flours that now bear the historic name of Shipton Mill are made with traditional French Burr stone millstones in the self-same way as in mediaeval days and as much of the grain as possible comes from local farms.

In 1981 when the current owners first discovered Shipton Mill at the far end of a winding Gloucestershire lane in Shipton Moyne Wood just outside the village of Long Newnton, it was a shadow of its former self. A handsome edifice, standing on the banks of a sweet-running tributary of the Avon, but no longer a working flour mill. The river wound round the site but the mill race was choked and the mill wheel was all but rusted away.

The incentive to make the millstones turn again was driven by the healthy appetite for natural foods shown by increasing numbers of people. The first task was to restore the machinery to clean the corn and drive the millstones. The work rate of this machinery is slow, much as it would have been in the middle ages. Stone grinding flour is a simple, traditional process in which all the organic goodness of wholemeal flour is retained, unlike steel "roller" milling of white flour when the essential bran and germ is engineered away and the increased heat generated can damage the natural proteins essential in producing the finest bread and doughs. While the water wheel at Shipton Mill does now turn again, it is not currently used to turn the millstones – it is purely for show on special occasions. Electricity provides a much more constant energy supply to keep the stones turning at just the right speed.  However, plans do exist to use the natural renewable energy source of the river to provide electricity to light the mill, offices and cottages at the site.

The grain ground at Shipton Mill now provides organic and wholemeal flours that are wholesome in texture and flavour, with a well-established reputation among Master Bakers up and down the country. 

In the nearby town of Malmesbury, site of a Benedictine monastery, the High Street is partially paved in Shipton Mill millstones, seized by the Abbot in a quarrel with the miller over who owned the mill stream fishing rights. Closer to the mill, its current layout was created during the Napoleonic wars when the miller needed more water to power the mill. He persuaded the local authorities to lend him a platoon of French Prisoners of War to divert the stream closer to the mill. Nowadays the mill and its associated waterways are home to a thriving and diverse ecosystem from the bats in the mill eaves to the wild brown trout and natural English crayfish in the crystal pure stream waters fed by springs. It is said that otters pass by and the striking blue flashes of the Kingfishers are an almost hourly occurrence.

Shipton Mill stoneground flour is once again a product of the mill - and of the place. Corn continues to come in for milling, in part, from the same Cotswold landscape that is the setting for the mill. Naturally, in such surroundings, we are reminded every day that we inherit the skills of those who came before us. For each year we have milled at Shipton, they milled for a hundred. In short, our flours are the products of their past.