Oyez! Come ye to Stretton Fair!

The annual Tudor Festival is coming up soon at Stretton Watermill.  This is where we take the mill back to 1596 when the lease of the mill was taken over by Ursula Leche of nearby Carden Hall.  At that time the mill would have been a thriving business and we try to recreate some of that atmosphere.

There will be Tudor tunes played on period instruments, a storyteller sharing curious happenings and folk tales of millers, a herbalist preparing country cures, along with demonstrations of the ancient machinery as Elizabethan millers grind wheat into flour.

The sergeant of the local militia will also be on the look out for troublemakers, with offenders being placed in the stocks.

Here's the list of offences as fixed to the mill...

The event takes place on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th July, from 12 noon to 5pm each day.  There will be plenty to keep you fascinated.  And best of all, the event is completely free!   Hope to see you there...

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.