The Cow Is A Mamal

We were just doing the last bits of preparation for our 'Wartime Mill' event this coming weekend - Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th April, 12 noon to 5pm as you're asking - and were looking for something to set our (wooden) cow in context when we came across the following piece in a book about life on the Home Front.  It is so wonderful it just had to be shared...

Many evacuees were seeing the country for the first time.  The nine o'clock news on 29th October 1939 ended with an essay by a ten-year-old East London evacuee:

"The cow is a mamal.  It has six sides, right, left, an upper and below.  At the back it has a tail, on which hangs a brush.  With this it sends the flies away so they do not fall into the milk.  The head is for the purpose of growing horns and so that the mouth can be somewhere.  The horns are to butt with, and the mouth is to moo with.

Under the cow hangs the milk.  It is arranged for milking.  When people milk, the milk comes and there is never an end to the supply.  How the cow does it, I have not yet realized but it makes more and more.

The cow has a fine sense of smell, one can smell it far away.  This is the reason for the fresh air in the country.

The man cow is called an ox.  It is not a mamal.  The cow does not eat much but what it eats it eats twice so that it gets enough.  When it is hungry it moos and when it says nothing it is because all its inside is full up with grass."

So, if you're nearby, do come along and have a try at milking Blossom, our wooden cow, (in the background of the picture above), or Dig for Victory, work a stirrup pump or the air raid siren, practice a gas mask drill, taste some ration book recipes, be recruited to the Home Guard, handle wartime artefacts, take a tour and see wheat being ground into flour and discover how our little rural mill played an important part in the war effort.

Mistletoe at the Mill

Regular readers of this blog will know how important our apple trees are to the history and folklore of the mill.  Last autumn we spotted the plentiful balls of mistletoe in the orchard at Norton Priory and wondered whether we could try to get some growing on our trees.  Apple is the preferred host tree for mistletoe, so when the Paul Quigley from NP offered us the chance to plant some mistletoe of their mistletoe upon our trees we seized this gladly. 

Stretton Watermill is located at the northern end of the Marches betwixt England and Wales, whereas the wonderful land of mistletoe is in the southern Marches.  One of the issues in getting mistletoe to establish itself is to obtain the berries from a local plant, mistletoe from Gloucestershire would be unlikely to take well in Cheshire.  Norton Priory had taken berries from a walled garden on the Wirral and now established it in their own walled garden orchard near Runcorn, so these was some of the nearest established plants we could get berries from.

Paul turned up with a plenty of berries, and the clever tips on how to plant them, ignoring the RHS instructions of nicking the bark and trying to wedge the berry underneath. Instead we were to mimic nature and the actions of a mistle thrush rubbing its beak against the tree to remove the sticky inside of the berry, and also to carry out the job in early March, when the berries are ripe, rather than at the end of the Christmas festivities.

The berries are squeezed to get the sticky centre and seeds out.  We gathered these along the edge of our hands, then placed several on a branch, hopefully getting a mix of male and female plants.  We were advised to avoid the older branches with thicker bark.

Paul was happily in tune with our feelings at the mill, that anything we introduce should be done not for purely for beauty, but that it should become a part of the stories of the site, fitting in with its history and legend.  As we worked, we shared tales and folklore of the mistletoe and the trees around our the mill.  If you would like to find out more then travel no further than this excellent mistletoe website.

Mistletoe is slow to establish, in a year we will know whether it has taken at all, but in three or four years we will hopefully see the plant itself on the trees.  Patience is required for this magical plant.

National Mills Weekend

Each May there is a celebration of mills across the country.  This year we've got some special happenings for mill enthusiasts on Sunday 12th and Monday 13th May.  There'll be stone dressing demonstrations, slide shows on mill heritage presented by millwright Malcolm Cooper, and specialist tours.

The intention is to tailor it to the interests of those attending to make it a very special event.  If you'd like more information or would like to book a place, contact Kate Harland at Cheshire West Museums, 01244 972066 or email kate.harland@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk

What we did in our Winter Holidays

At the end of the autumn, the mill was awarded Quality Assured Visitor Attraction status by Visit England for the seventh year in a run.  It's lovely to know that in these modern days with gadgets everywhere that the personal touch of millers at an ancient rural watermill is still valued.  We had our last visitors to the watermill in October, some school groups who had come to take part in our wartime mill workshop.  Since then millers have given the place a good clean throughout and put the mill to bed for the winter.  Maintenance work and repairs have taken place on the some of the machinery and the penstock by the overshot wheel.  These are the types of jobs that you can only get done when the mill is closed.  The sluice gates on the by-wash have been open through the winter to send the water past the mill rather than risk damaging the machinery inside if we have heavy rain.  Even so, with the year-long rain that we had in 2012 the pond has remained fairly full this past few months and millers have had to make regular checks on the place. 

As readers of this blog will know there are strong links between apple trees and watermills and so on 12th January, we wassailed our apple trees at the mill in keeping with tradition. 

Friends and people who have been keen supporters of the mill gathered as darkness began to fall.  One of the millers had been busy all day baking cheese scones and mulling cider for everyone to enjoy along with some hot spiced apple juice. 

We listened to the folk tale of the Apple Tree Man, then picked up our drums and bells to process around the trees and make much noise to drive away the evil spirits.

We hung toast in the branches for the birds.  Whatever the apple harvest this year, there was a fine crop of toast.

We sang to the oldest apple tree and poured cider on its roots. 

Then it was done and all headed off to the nearby Carden Arms for a meal and lots of music.

We'll be looking forward to the watermill opening up to everyone again in a few months, beginning with weekend afternoons from April, then each afternoon except Monday from May.  And of course there will be many special events through the spring and summer to bring to life the many stories of our wonderful mill.  Of which, more soon...

The End of Another Season

At the end of an enjoyable, but tiring, weekend we've now closed to general visitors for the rest of the year, but we've got schools visiting us for the next couple of weeks before the end of season clean and putting the mill to bed. 

As has become tradition now we end our summer with a Victorian Harvest weekend, which suits the time of year and the mill's heritage perfectly.  Of course we've been grinding wheat into flour, but also pressing apples for juice and churning cream into butter.  And where else do you get free cake?!  Our visitors have also enjoyed tastes of apple cake, caraway cake, fruit cake and Victoria sponge all made following old recipes.

There were 19th century tunes from Chris, Joan and Tom.

And Chris once again demonstrated his penny farthing riding skills.

So it was a lovely way to round off a wonderful summer for the mill.  But whilst it gets a bit too cold to have everyone visiting over the winter, the work behind the scenes continues, so expect more from us on this blog over the next few months.

Fancy a Date..?

Being such an ancient mill, you'd expect to find the odd datestone around the place, but when you start looking they're everywhere at Stretton.  Here's a few to look out for...

Some of the former millers are commemorated on plaques, some original, but most painted in more recent times by the renowned folk artist Tony Lewery. 

The old shippen adjacent to the mill building, which today houses the shop and small exhibition, will be two centuries old next year.  We only know this because of the date stone above the door.

The date by the overshot wheel does confuse some people, but the 1977 refers to the restoration and opening as a museum, rather than the installation of a wheel in that location which was done 207 years earlier.

Harder to spot and showing a decline in care in marking a date is the wooden plaque on the access bridge at the rear of the mill installed two decades ago.

This is more like it, from the eighteenth century when people took time over their graffiti.  The I is in fact a J and the M we expect to mean Miller, so it would be John Hughes, Miller.  This carving is on the mill's chimney outside and on another face of the chimney is the longhand version.

Downstairs in the mill, a board commemorates the restoration of the mill in the 1970s by Dr Cyril Boucher.

And the first grinding of wheat following the restoration is recorded as a simple pencil note on an oak beam.

This simple inscription on the sandstone of the chimney inside the mill records the initials PB several times, once alongside the date 1712.  We assume PB was as miller at Stretton but not found any further details about him yet.

And finally a couple of dates for your diary.  On Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th September, there will be free tours of Stretton Watermill to celebrate Heritage Open Days, and on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th September 2012 the mill will once again be hosting a Victorian Harvest Weekend with corn grinding, apple pressing, butter making, tastes of harvest cakes along with games and period music.  Hope to see you there.

Lights, Camera, Action!

We've just been doing a bit of filming at Stretton Watermill, where our mill was playing the part of the old Dee Mill at Chester.  It's to be included in a major exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum next year exploring medieval Chester.  As the famous Dee Mills have long since gone, Stretton was the perfect substitute location as a nearby mill dating back to the mid-fourteenth century.

The mill section of the film features the miller's wife discussing trade in Chester and the Mystery Plays' links with millers and bakers whilst operating the watermill in her husband's absence.

Other scenes will include a Welsh pilgrim at St John's church, a Cheshire archer at the Water Tower and the Abbot of St Werburgh's in the abbey, (today Chester Cathedral).  The scenes are all linked by a narrator who was also included in the scenes at the mill.

Look out for this appearing in 2013, but in the meantime you can learn more about the Mapping Medieval Chester project on this website.