Headley Mill
is on the B3004 between Alton and Liphook (186
SU 812357) and is said to have had its origin in
Saxon times when Earl Godwin (father of King
Harold) owned the site. A mill is recorded
here in Domesday and in 1272, the miller Robert
Horlebat enlarged the pond to give more power.
In later years, Bishops of Winchester were the
owners and there are records of the copyhold
leases to named millers in the diocesan records.
In 1794, Danial Knight insured the utensils and
trade of his brick, timber and tiled mill here
for £250 and from 1849 until 1907, the Lickfold
family were the millers. It ceased work in
1907 until Frederick Ellis bought it and started
it working again in 1913.
The house and bakehouse with its bread oven is
on the northern end and was partly rebuilt in
1796, when the bridge over the water supply to
the wheel was replaced in brick and the wheel
enclosed to form a continuous building. The
south western end of the mill building dates
from the 16th century. The whole is a stone
building with a tiled roof, sitting over the
River Wey and the mill has a pond of about four
acres, which has never failed to supply the
7.5ft head of water necessary to run the 12.5 x
7.5ft breast-shot wheel.
The old oak and elm wheel was replaced by
Coopers of Romsey in 1926 with an iron one on
the original 1817 iron shaft. New bearings
fitted them were replaced in 1977 by Armfields
(Ag.) of Fordingbridge. The iron 9' pitwheel
has oak cogs designed, made and fitted by the
Ellis family in 1977 and the great spur wheel is
8.25ft in diameter. It is of iron with beech
cogs and is capable of driving two of the four
pairs of 48" stones, 3 pairs of burr and one
peak, at any one time. Bevel gears from the
crown wheel drive the grain cleaner, mixer,
crushers, rollers,cake cracker, sack hoist and
110v electricity generator.
The Ellis family took over Headley
Mill
in 1913, but milling started in the family when
John Edward Ellis was apprenticed at the age of
13 to the miller of Cross-in-Hand windmill in
Sussex. After completing his apprenticeship,
he worked at Thakeham, West Chiltington and
Hardham mills before taking the lease of
Greatham mill in 1889 and starting to trade
there as J Ellis and Sons. In September of
that year, he transferred the business to Sheet
Bridge Mill and worked there with his sons Fred
and Frank. Another son, George, took the lease
of Hurst Mill, between Petersfield and Harting
in 1891 and stayed there until 1928.
Father John retired in 1907 and the tenancy
passed to Fred and Frank, but when John died in
1913, Fred moved to Headley Mill while Frank
stayed at Sheet Bridge. Both traded as J
Ellis and Sons, although there was no financial
connection, but when Fred died, Headley was run
by his sons John and Peter as J Ellis and Sons (Bordon)
Ltd.
Frank also ran Sheet, Liss and Abbey
(Winchester) Mills and Iping mill in West
Sussex. His sons Clive and David carried on the
business after his death in 1955 as J Ellis and
Sons (Petersfield) Ltd.
In 1850, the Bonham Carter family acquired a
large area of Sheet, including Sheet Bridge Mill
and in 1858, John Bonham Carter modernised the
mill by replacing the wheel with an Armfield
Turbine and building a large brick extension to
the west.
The mill used a bank of cylinder pumps to
provide water from the ancient St Mary's well to
the newly built house at Adhurst and it became a
condition of the lease that they must be driven
every day except Sunday. A steam engine in
the mill did not form part of the lease or drive
any of the mill machinery and it is assumed that
it was held in reserve in case the turbine
failed.
The stones there were removed in the 1920s and
replaced by an Armfield Dreadnought Grinder and
later by other high speed grinders. There was
also the other usual machinery there - oat
crusher, cake crusher, maize cutter, fountain
mixer and seed cleaning plant. The turbine
could not cope with all this, so a diesel engine
was installed.
With acknowledgements and thanks to members of
the Ellis family - as the leaflet written about
the mill says, "Headley
Mill is not a `resurrected ' water mill, but has
a known record of service for over 1,000 years".
Mary and Tony Yoward
