Autumn Newsletter
As luck would have it...
As luck would have it, the annual Classic Nostalgia Concours judging event produced a highlight of our year. Afterwards, Tony Harrison was left with a nifty “Best Dressed 2025” rosette going spare, so pondered about presenting it to a Dibnah as a one-off memorial to haute couture. After a conflab with Dibnah High Command, a worthy victim was singled out. Then, during a subsequent lunchtime break, he was duly presented with the stylish award. That carefully selected specimen of sartorial elegance was our skilled metal-wrangler, young Headley Fletcher, who had just replaced his decidedly second-hand, oil-stained and welding-spatter holed cow-gown (he’s a huge Basil Davenport fan) with a brand new one. His recently donned replacement cap and highly polished steel toe-capped boots completed the ensemble, securing him the vote without a murmur of dissent. Headley is pictured receiving his award from Tony Harrison, and adopting his famously coquettish “Vogue photoshoot” waterwheel pose that clinched the award.
Autumn begins!
As Autumn begins, the mill remains a popular visitor attraction. It performed for visitors to the “Championship Challenge” and “Harvest Festival” hillclimbs, YouTuber Alex Kersten’s “AutoAlex” event and for the prestigious, multinational, “Hampton Court Concours” gathering – with a royal family member in attendance. Max Hunt gave them an interactive and highly amusing presentation on Shelsley’s hillclimbing history which was rightly cheered to the Black Barn’s highest rafters. The mill also provided an unusual afternoon and late evening distraction for guests at the hillclimb’s wedding celebrations of Simon and Ferne Pearce. Six of their early guests, standing close to the waterwheel’s bottom railings (plus your scribe as tour guide), became a touch waterlogged when our (anonymous !) miller got carried away, sending excess grain into the spinning millstones. The stones and waterwheel promptly (and literally) “ground to a halt”, leaving the gushing water with severely restricted escape opportunities. Fortunately, they were troupers, taking it in good part and drying out rapidly in the hot evening air. The newlyweds very kindly provided a delicious supper for the attending Dibnahs (thanks to ‘Memories Catering’) - a development we feel we could get used to.
A thank you.
The Dibnahs must say a huge “Thank You” to the many MAC members who answered our call to arms by arriving at the Dibnah workshop with car loads of donated items for our very successful “Harvest Festival Autojumble” event. You greatly helped the watermill charity exceed our expectations towards defraying the costs of the mill’s upcoming roofing work.
Unscheduled maintenance.
The Regular or unscheduled maintenance jobs have included painting the waterwheel and its penstock box. Gloopy bituminous paint was used for the protection of these cast iron components, as recommended in the guide produced by the renowned SPAB, the “Society For The Protection Of Ancient Buildings”. The SPAB Guide is revered as something akin to a Dibnahs’ Bible for all things mill related. This also involved painting the 14 feet tall water-level “chimney”, topped by its handsome, floating, “dipstick” head-piece - a shiny copper and brass model of a hillclimb car, an early Headley masterpiece. If you’re ever near the penstock’s vertical “chimney” by the waterwheel, and notice this model car suddenly rising into the air, our strong advice is to run like billyoh ! Something has seriously bunged-up the water flow and getting damp is an imminent possibility – see above.
Dam!
The dam(n) wall sprang a leak between the brickwork and the large sleepers topping it off. These form the dam-overflow’s lip into the chamber and stream below. Some magic sealing goop, some wooden shuttering and buckets of cement seem to have cured that, for the time being.
Continued Success?
Water pouring down the side of the mill from the guttering in heavy rain prompted a two pronged attack. John Townley, Tim Jessop and Alan Crosby tackled some re-pointing work, some gutter and drain-pipe unblocking (of both mill and workshop), plus removing moss from the mill roof. The pointing preparations revealed cavities between bricks that extended inwards for a good seven inches ! Shelsley’s air is obviously of good quality as moss grows in copious clumps on the roof slopes, then sloughs off and blocks the gutters and drains. Tim Jessop is our numero uno intrepid ladder-climbing volunteer (a retired pilot, he has a head for heights) so he shovelled out the guttering and removed sections of drain pipe in order to unblock them. We’d previously tried flushing them out with a hosepipe and even ran a compressor airline up there to blow them out. Nothing worked, so removal was the only option. Having now splattered the mill’s windows outside with gobbets of wet moss – and our last lime-washing exercise had spotted them inside with white blobs - the lads got out their buckets, scrapers and cleaning rags and turned themselves into passable window-cleaners.
Three lots of woodwork have been going on of late. John Bunch and Chris Pycock’s new right-hand Return Road gate is now complete, and very nice it looks too. But it will surely show up its original, left-hand neighbour – so what to do ? Dave Ball and Rob Higginson’s work on re-crafting handles for the smaller sack-truck continues and Headley has made and replaced all the failed wooden dowelling pegs locating the mill’s “Horse”. The “Horse” is the wood frame that sits on top of the wooden “Tun” (enclosing the millstones) to support the grain hopper which feeds grain into the centre of the rotating stones. He’s done a grand job, which was a revelation as metalwork is his “thing” - we didn’t even know he could spell “wood”.
This year the orchard produced a bumper apple crop, so much so that many branches were overloaded and snapped, involving an operation to mitigate the damage. Our well maintained mill gardens never allow any let up, so weeding, mowing, strimming, cutting-back and pruning kept our gardening crew busy. The jobs that Tony Harrison, Jenny Johnson, Robin Nicholson, Trefor Cook (and Paul Royds, as required) all happily undertake are vital to preserving our domain in a tidy and attractive condition.
The Dibnahs recently finished work early, then turned the tables on convention by visiting someone else’s mill for a change ! This was by courtesy of Ian Grace, founder of the “Vintage Minor Register”, whose group toured our mill in late July. Ian kindly arranged for eight of us to visit Rowden Mill, a privately owned, disused mill some 25 minutes from Shelsley. It’s mill pond and mill race, feeding from the River Frome, had long since been bulldozed out of existence, but the old mill’s working parts have been preserved and incorporated into the refurbished dwelling. The mill featured an external water-turbine, driving a single pair of millstones from a spur gear via a horizontal drive belt - plus a marvellously ingenious belt-driven reduction gear for the sack hoist. We enjoyed a challenging time playing "Spot the mill component and figure out how it originally worked". The cherry on the visit’s cake was Ian and his wife kindly providing wonderful drinks and nibbles outside in the sun afterwards - many thanks to you both.
Snapshot
A quick glance at some of our works
Credits:
Thanks to all contributors.