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Watermills and Windmills of Middlesex (Second Edition)

Watermill gazetteer A-D

ACTON

(1-3) Early mills, sites unidentified

(4)   Steyne Mills, Stamford Brook; standing 1864 199805

There were four watermills on Acton Manor in the sixteenth century, according to the Victoria County History, although the site of only one has been located with certainty. A place known as Steyne Mills included a “mill house” in 1722; it was then a tanyard(1), but a watermill is shown there on the 1864 Ordnance Survey.

(1) LMA Acc.276/27

BEDFONT

(1) Mediaeval mill (possibly at Isleworth)

(2) Lower Mills, Duke of Northumberland’s River 112746

(3) Upper Mills, Duke of Northumberland’s River 108746

(4) Sword mill, River Crane, 1675

In 1375 the site of a former mill at Imbury, near Baber Bridge, was conveyed to the Crown(1); the Victoria County History believes it may be identical with one near the Bridge which was possibly destroyed in 1264 during the Barons’ rebellion against Henry III(2). The power source does not appear to be known, and the mill may have stood within the parish of Isleworth.

 Not least because of the gap of four hundred years which follows, it is unlikely it had any connection to the gunpowder mills with which the area is most commonly associated. These gunpowder mills, like those at Hounslow, have attracted a great deal of interest from industrial archaeologists and have already been adequately chronicled elsewhere (see Bibliography). However no book on Middlesex mills can be complete without giving at least the basic details of their history and functioning.

 Permission to build them was originally granted by King James I in 1609. The Lord of the Manor, Sir Michael Stanhope, protested but to avail; construction went ahead and in 1619 the King even excused the owners of the mills from their annual rent(3). They are thought to have been a reconstruction of a corn mill, one of two mills which stood on the Duke of Northumberland’s River between Faggs Road and the River Crane, on land to the north-west of Baber Bridge. The other was a paper mill and under separate ownership. By 1630 the powder mills had been converted into a sword mill, where sword blades used by both sides in the Civil War were manufactured. After the mid-1650s production of these ceased and in 1655 Thomas Carter, who had acquired the lease of the site, converted the mills back to the manufacture of gunpowder. Twelve years later he established a second powder mill to the south of the Bridge, having received a joint lease from the Duke, who owned the river, and Francis Phillips who owned the land(3). A later owner of the sites, John Richardson, added the paper mill mentioned above to the complex, converting it too into a gunpowder mill. The original gunpowder mills now became known as the Upper Mills, and the former paper mills as the Lower Mills. The Upper Mills ceased operating as powder mills in about 1750 but were converted back to the making of explosives in the late nineteenth century as the North Feltham Cartridge Factory. Today, nothing remains of them apart from the mill race.

 The Victoria County History implies that a separate paper mill was built above Baber Bridge just below the junction of the Duke of Northumberland with the Crane in about 1620; this was working in 1636 but had apparently disappeared by 1675 when Ogilby does not show it on his Britannia. He does however show a sword mill below the Bridge on the Crane, and it is thought that branch of the business was transferred there after the mill further up was converted to gunpowder-making, but there is no other evidence for such an establishment continuing in existence into the latter part of the century and the History suggests he may have confused it with the second powder mill. One of the mills is indicated on J Cary’s map Fifteen Miles Around London in 1786 as “Buda Mill”(4).  In 1799 the Lower Mills were destroyed in an explosion, in which a couple of men were killed, and subsequently rebuilt on what was considered to be a safer plan, spaced further apart and at a greater distance from the road. Piles of earth called “baffle mounds”, intended to contain and dissipate the force of any explosions, were thrown up near the works buildings. The complex was smaller than that at Twickenham (the Hounslow Gunpowder Mills), from which it was originally independent but whose owners later acquired it as an auxiliary to the Twickenham site. The safety record of the Bedfont mills was better than that at Hounslow, but they had their fair share of accidents – apart from that mentioned above one occurred in 1825, again with the loss of two men.

 In 1820 the firm of Curtis and Harvey acquired the Hounslow and Bedfont sites, running the latter as an annexe to the former and using them to produce black powder for small arms, especially sporting guns. After the First World War both complexes were taken over by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), who responded to the inevitable slump in the industry by rationalising it. The mills  were closed during the 1920s and the buildings dismantled and set alight to destroy any residual gunpowder.(5) Some remains may still be seen amid pleasantly wooded surroundings, and a visit to the site is well worthwhile from a natural historical, as well as an industrial archaeological, point of view. A guide to the site and the walks which may be had there could at one time be consulted at the Treaty Centre Library, Hounslow. 

 The mills were built largely of wood so that they could be more easily and cheaply reconstructed in the event of an explosion destroying them. They stood on brick bases, and it is these which constitute the principal visible remains. They stand on either side of the river, which was divided by a brick pier into two mill races, so that it drove the wheels of both mills. This pier would also have provided support for the ends of the axles carrying the wheels. The bricked-up circles where these entered the walls of the mills may still be seen. The machinery was rather different in arrangement from that of a corn mill: the great spur wheel engaged with another at the top of a shaft to whose lower end were fixed a pair of vertically-mounted millstones – known as edge runner stones – above a bedstone. The ingredients of gunpowder, namely saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, were placed on the bedstone and water added. The runner stones would then revolve over the mixture to produce a kind of cake. In the 1890s the mills were modernised with the introduction of steam engines and the boiler house and supporting brickwork for these is still evident, with the threaded rods for bolting the engines into place. Apart from these remnants little is left of the complex apart from the baffle mounds and the occasional millstone.

 A fuller account of the mills and of the archaeological excavations which have taken place there may be found in the August 1985 edition of the London Archaeologist (see Bibliography). Permission was not given to reproduce it here.

 Sadly, in recent years the mills have been allowed to become overgrown, where they are not smothered in graffiti, so that the outline of the buildings along with particular features of interest may not be discernible. 

(1) CCR 1374-7, 213; for Imbury see p107 of VCH

(2) VCH p107; and see under Isleworth in this book

(3) London Archaeologist article; BM Microfilm 380 (Alnwick Castle, Syon MS.E 15 3.d)

(4) Gareth Hughes, Windmill Hoppers website 30th November 2013

(5) LMA

(1) Bedfont gunpowder mills, c1883

(2)  Bedfont gunpowder mills: the shell of one of the mill buildings, 1994 (Mike Pannett)  

(3) Edge runner stone at the Bedfont gunpowder mills site, 1994 (Mike Pannett)

BOW

River Lea; paper mill, Bow Bridge  379834 

Edward Lloyd, owner of the paper mills at Sittingbourne in Kent, which remain in use to this day, also operated one at Bow Bridge in the 1860s and 1870s. Lloyd was the proprietor of a weekly newspaper which bore his name, and we may presume it was for this that the paper produced by the mills was intended. They were in operation by 1862, when Lloyd was granted a provisional patent  for improvements to the machinery used in the process. At this time they were turning out straw and rag printings, but by 1868 produced news and rag printings from raw fibres. Unusually the business never appears to have received the Excise number normally allocated to paper mills.

The mill evidently ceased work during 1878; it is listed in a Directory of Paper Mills for that year, but in another (Kent’s) published on 1st January 1879 it is included in a list of mills struck off the register, being described as “broken up”.

BRENTFORD

(1)  Early mill

(2)  Old Brentford; standing 1564

(3)  River Brent, at The Butts 175776

(4)  River Brent, at Brentford End; gone during 19th century 175774

Also various mills whose sites cannot at present be identified

In 1297 the lord of the manor of Isleworth owned a mill “of Brentford”, presumably driven by the Brent if a watermill. The Victoria County History believes it was probably that granted in about 1235 with land by the river by Henry de Stoke to his daughter Maud. Henry held it of the Abbey of St Radegund at Bradsole in Kent. Ralph de Pyrie, thought to have been Maud’s son, later granted it to Edmund, Earl of Cornwall(1). It seems to have been still in existence in 1326(2).

A watermill was built over a common sewer, whose water provided the power for the wheel, at Old Brentford sometime prior to 1564(3). In 1738 the lord of the manor leased the right to build a mill on the Brent(4); this stood at the western end of the district known as the Butts until its demolition in 1904, by which time it was showing signs of dilapidation(5). It was a small and undistinguished-looking building, part brick and part timber with a tiled roof. 

Comparatively little is known about this mill’s history. After ceasing work it served as home to a firm of builders and decorators. Following this the Canal Boat Mission wished to take it over and negotiated for its purchase from the owners, the Grand Junction Canal Company; they did not need a large building and the mill’s small size and compactness must have appealed to them. However, it was decided instead to pull the existing structure down and build a new one.(6)

Brentford End

This mill stood on the Brent just above Brentford Bridge. In 1768 it was owned by Richard Dixon and William Allcock, of Cripplegate and Covent Garden respectively, and tenanted by Edmund Hill. It was then a timber affair with a tiled roof.(7) By 1777 it had been partly rebuilt in brick; Hill was still tenant but the owners were now Thomas Harrington and Edward Kendall(8). Two years later Hill had succeeded to ownership of the property(9). An insurance policy note of 1786 indicates the mill was by then entirely of brick, adding that it is “well secured by an Iron Door”(10). Thomas Hall was the tenant miller in October that year(11). By 1793 he had been succeeded by Messrs Hill and Stanbrough(12), who operated the mill until 1837 when their partnership was dissolved(13). The mill appears to have gone by 1865 when it is not shown in the Isleworth Inclosure Award.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Brentford was an important centre of the milling industry, and in 1792 there are said to have been at least five watermills there, including those at Brentford End and the Butts. Some of the mills were associated with local malthouses, distilleries and breweries; or with a turpentine and starch works, their purpose in the latter case probably not being to grind corn.(14)

The following insurance policies all relate to watermills, but it is impossible to say where they stood:

(1) A brick and tiled mill was insured against fire in 1782 by Thomas Finch of New Brentford for £400(15).

(2) In 1788 Richard Bax had a watermill at Brentford, within which he kept stock to the value of £300(16).

(3) In 1793 Dr Robert Wallace Johnson and Blissett William Gould had a mill, again brick and tiled, at the wharf which they insured for £300. Here water power was supplemented by a steam engine.(17)

(1)   NA,E 36/57, nos 4, 5, 45; CP 25(1)/146/9/119

(2)   SC 6/916/21

(3)   Guildhall MS 10312/91 5d

(4)   Boston Manor Court Book (1692-1842), 1774 rental (LMA)

(5)   The mill is recorded in 1746 (New Brentford MS 17517-18) and 1777 (BL Maps K.29.9.a)

(6)   1900 Annual Report of Canal Boat Mission

(7)   Sun Fire Insurance Policy vol.180, no. 253309, 11th January 1768

(8)   Sun FIP vol.262, no. 393435, 29th December 1777

(9)   Sun FIP vol.271, no. 407507, 2nd January 1779

(10) Sun FIP vol.337, no. 518799, 1st June 1786

(11) Sun FIP vol.339, no. 522486, 5th October 1786

(12) Sun FIP vol.392, no. 611500, 2nd February 1793

(13) London Gazette 16th January 1838 

(14) Victoria County History; New Brentford MS 17518, Guildhall MS 10465/106 p127

(15) Sun FIP vol.298, no. 453496, 1st January 1782

(16) Sun FIP vol.352, no. 544397, vol.352, 27th May 1788

(17) Sun FIP vol.392, no. 611183, 24th January 1793

(4) Brentford watermill in 1903 (Hounslow Libraries)

CHELSEA

Waterwheels were employed for a time, unsuccessfully it appears, at the waterworks here in the late eighteenth century (see entry on Chelsea in section on windmills).

CHISWICK

River Thames, 15th century mill

Sutton Court Manor had a watermill “next Sutton”, in the area of the present Sutton Court Road, in 1458; it had gone by 1590(1).

(1) Phillimore and Whitton, “Chiswick,”; LMA Acc.531/66

CITY OF LONDON

(1) River Thames, St Katharine’s Dock 345805 (approx.) 

(2) River Thames, Traitor’s Gate 817805

(3) River Thames, Crash Mills, Wapping 343803

St Katharine’s Hospital near the Tower of London, founded in 1148, had a watermill on the site later occupied by the Iron Gate. William de Longchamp, Richard I’s Chancellor during his absence on the Crusades, found that the mill stood in the way of his planned alterations to the Tower and had it demolished, to the chagrin of the Hospital. Eventually, as part of the reconstruction of the Tower during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), a new mill was provided as compensation. It was standing in 1580 when it was described as “the Abbot’s Mill of Tourehill”. The site of the Hospital is today covered by St Katharine’s Dock.

In the eighteenth century there was a waterwheel for pumping water at Traitor’s Gate. Both this and the above mill derived their power from water pent up in the Tower moat by high tide. 

A tidal watermill also stood at the intersection of Wapping High Street and Thomas More Street. The “Mill of Crosseine Lane”, as it was called in 1235, originally belonged to Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate. Later it became the property of the Abbey of St Mary Graces on Tower Hill, founded by Edward III (reigned 1327-77). In 1603 certain people were charged with obstructing by means of “clay, posts and mud” a watercourse which linked the Thames to “divers mills called Crashmilles”. The mills are last heard of in 1608 when the Crown, which had by now acquired them, was leasing then at £16 per year. Like the Hospital mill, all traces of them have been obliterated by dockyard construction. An illustration of the layout of the complex, probably conjectural, appears on page 84 of Nicholas Barton’s The Lost Rivers of London.

A rather unusual mill was advertised for sale in the Morning Chronicle of 1st August 1808. This was set up in the hulk of a newly-built gun brig, apparently never used for its intended purpose, moored between Blackfriars and London Bridges. The wheel was presumably driven directly by the river water, to which it was open. The mill had three pairs of stones and rent was paid for it to the City.(1) Floating watermills were common in some parts of continental Europe, but rather less so in Britain.

(1) Per B Reynolds, “Windmill Hoppers” website 19/9/2015

CLERKENWELL

(1+) River Fleet; various mills from the 14th to the 18th century

(2)   New River Head, New River; waterwheel for pumping

Here, the lower reaches of the River Fleet were known in the fourteenth century and after as Trulmyll, Turnmill or Tru-mill Brook because of the number of watermills situated on it north of the Fleet bridge. The noise they collectively produced was considered agreeable by the mediaeval chronicler Mark FitzStephen, who described the area as “a delightful plain of meadow land interspersed with flowing streams, on which stand mills, whose clack is very pleasing to the ear.” This testifies that the technology of the time could actually be an environmental asset, in sharp contrast to that of later centuries. The Turnmill Brook gave its name to Turnmill Street, a name which still survives. In FitzStephen’s time two of the watermills were owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem and let by them to one Francis Bach at a rent of 100s per year. Another belonged to the nunnery of St Mary, Clerkenwell; a register or Cartulary of the latter’s holdings mentions “the ditch that goes from Holeburne to the mill of the nuns.” It stood close to the gardens and fishponds of the Knights Hospitallers, who owned the next mill along; this had two waterwheels and was leased in 1338 at a rent of £5, suggesting it was much used. Parts of it were excavated in 1855.(1)

 In the time of King John there was a mill near Castle Lane, between Blackfriars and the Thames, belonging to the Knights Templars. John granted a place by the Fleet River, near Baynard’s Castle, on which to build a tide mill, and the whole course of the water of the Fleet to serve it.  

 In 1307 Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, complained that due to  among other factors “the diversion of the river by them of the New Temple for their mills without Baynard’s Castle” ships could not navigate the river where it ran under Holebourne Bridge and Fleet Bridge into the Thames. On the petition of the Earl the constable of the tower along with the mayor and sheriffs of London were directed to procure certain “honest and discreet men to inquire into the former state of the river,” and return it to its original course and condition. The mills were duly removed, but the river was not restored to its proper course or breadth, and in time came to be regarded as merely a brook. Mills again began to make their appearance on it; however, “it was soon choked with filth again.”

 Pollution, as the above suggests, was frequently a problem. The river had to be cleaned out in 1502 after which it continued to drive several mills, for corn grinding and other purposes, but later returned once again to an unsavoury state. The last time the Fleet was capable of turning a mill-wheel was in the eighteenth century. In 1714 there appeared in the Daily Courant of 17th September an advertisement for a house to let in Bowling-Alley, Turnmill Street, with a common sewer beside it whose water could be used to turn a mill to grind “powder liquorish” and other commodities. A snuff mill also stood there at this time, and in 1740 the publisher Edward Cave purchased a machine for spinning wool or cotton into thread, yarn or worsted, consisting of a hundred spindles, and built a watermill on the Faggeswell Brook to drive it, damming up a part of the Fleet near the modern Charterhouse Street for the purpose. Its upkeep was the responsibility of Paul of Birmingham, who had originally patented it. However the mill was never brought into profitable order, and shortly after this smells from the river had become such a nuisance that most of it was paved over to form a road. In 1750 there was still a snuff mill in use at Baggnige Wells.(2)

 For a time, pumping operations at the waterworks at New River Head were carried out partly by a waterwheel. One was first suggested for the purpose in 1704 by the Reverend John Lowthorp, a member of the Royal Society who had been asked by the New River Head Company to advise on the best means of raising the water of the river at Islington to the required height, but nothing seems to have been done. The possibility was again mooted at a meeting of the Company’s directors in 1774; the work was at this time being done by a horse mill but evidently it was not considered satisfactory. At a further meeting in February 1776 it was finally decided that the project should go ahead; it was initially proposed to install the waterwheel in the “Round Tower”, the surviving base of the windmill which had earlier been erected for the purpose but found unsuitable, but this was abandoned because of technical problems and the wheel set up instead in a brick-lined pit on the east side of the windmill stump.(1)

 The purpose of the wheel, which was of overshot type and turned by the New River itself, was to pump water up into the reservoir known as the High Pond. The surplus water was not wasted but instead channelled into another reservoir from which it was pumped to over seven hundred houses in the area. The wheel also supplied water for the fire engine kept at the works(2).

 The construction of the wheel was completed by November 1779.  Originally it was uncovered but not long after its completion a roof was put over it to protect it from the weather.(3)  

 It underwent a major reconstruction in 1799 and continued to give good service for many years. It is mentioned in 1804 and in 1833, in which years the site foreman’s duties included keeping a book recording the performance of both the waterwheel and the steam engines by then installed, and in 1842 when the then surveyor, W C Mylne, reported that works had been needed to a damaged sewer pipe where “large quantities of water are discharged…from the waterwheel”. At this time it was being used primarily to supplement the steam engines. There is no evidence of the wheel’s existence after 1856 when major alterations were carried out at the works. No visible trace of it or its pit remain today.(4)

 The site at New River Head is unusual in having had examples of wind, horse, water, and steam engines on the premises, all performing the same task in unbroken sequence.

 Robert Ward comments that the wheel seems generally to have operated efficiently. A resolution was passed at a Company meeting in March 1780 that “the present state of the fire engine be altered and improved so as to perform the whole business when the waterwheel stops.” This suggests the wheel was able to do so much pumping that the fire engine could be taken out of service for a time while modfifications were made to it, and also that the engine could not pump as much water as was needed without help from the wheel. There is no evidence that the latter ever gave any trouble or of disputes over how it might be improved; in the end it was simply superseded by a more advanced technology. By 1780 the sides of the Upper Pond had been raised to allow for a greater depth of water, so the wheel was able to pump higher than the horses or the Newcomen engine had had to do. Ward wonders why the company had taken so long to install water power given that it had proved so beneficial.(5)

(1) Faustina (The Nun’s Cartulary), B3.folio.27v. & 32; W O Hassall, The Conventual Buildings of St Mary, Clerkenwell (reprinted from Transactions of LAMAS New Series vol 8 pt 2, p256-259), p236

(2) Robert Ward, London’s New River (Historical Publications 2003)

(3) Ibid

(4) Ibid

(5) Ibid

(6) Ibid

See also Minutes of New River Company Meetings, LMA ACC 2558/NR1/1-45; LMA, Reports and Papers of the Bridge House Committee 1710-14; Guildhall Ms 2194

CRANFORD

In 1650 the inhabitants of Cranford along with those of the neighbouring parishes petitioned unsuccessfully for a corn mill to be built on the Duke of Northumberland’s River near the sword-blade mills on Hounslow Heath(1).

(1) CSP(D) 1650, 4

WEST DRAYTON

River Colne, 054791

Here is one of those places where a mill has stood since mediaeval times. It appears to have always occupied the same site, and no other is known to have existed in the parish. After its mention in Domesday Book (see above) it is first recorded in a survey of the manor in 1222(1). In 1467 the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral leased it for ninety-nine years to Clement Cook of Twickenham(2). After passing through various hands the lease was bought by William Hyll who assigned it in 1538 to William Paget(3), whose property it became, along with the manor, in 1546 when the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s surrendered their holdings to the Crown. In a survey of the manor made by Edmund Twynyho, Lord Paget’s auditor, in November 1557 reference was made to the “new mylle” and the “old mylle”; there were two mills, for corn and for malt, under one roof. The value of the mill together with the fishery, watercourses and weir, one acre of land called Chavingcrofte, a rood of land called an Aldergrove, and two “eights” (aits, which are small islands) was £18; the miller, one John Baker, was required to make this payment in two parts, at the feast of the Annunciation (25th March) and at Michaelmas (29th September). Paget had enlarged the premises by 1559, adding an additional wheat mill(4). Under the leases at this time the miller was responsible not only for grinding the lord’s corn free of charge but also keeping the mill stream clear of rubbish and its banks in good repair(5). 

 In 1696 the mill was leased to Nicholas Faulcon(6), who used a part of the premises for paper-making(7). Repairs were carried out in 1697-8. In 1736 James Mills secured a lease of the mill(8), which passed on his death in 1764 to his wife Elizabeth, who carried on the business together with their son Alan(9).  Elizabeth was able to buy the property in 1772, on which she discontinued the grinding of corn altogether. Shortly before 1796 the mill was in the possession of Nicholas Mercer(10), who almost wholly rebuilt it(11). His family were originally from Uxbridge, but soon established themselves well and truly in Drayton; they grew to have so many local connections that by the 1880s it was said to be impossible to walk down the High Street in either place without meeting a Mercer or one of their relatives. Nicholas was originally a lessee, but became sole owner of the property in 1816. By this time the mill had begun to produce millboard, which was to remain its principal product throughout the remainder of its working life(12). In 1876 it was reputed to be the largest mill for the manufacture of this commodity in existence. In the same year reference was made in Thorne’s “Handbook To The Environs Of London” to the “large heaps of ship rope soaking up clay” in its vicinity, along with “stacks of old book-covers imbibing air and moisture preparatory to reissue.” The Mercer family remained in charge of the mill, Daniel Mercer operating it in 1839 and Daniel and Richard Mercer from 1845 to 1886, until 1893 when they disposed of their interest in it to the West Drayton Millboard Company. Under the new management it produced twenty tons of cardboard for bookbinding each week and gave employment to forty local men. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century a series of disastrous fires occurred at the mill, one of which, in 1913, completely gutted it. This however did not mean the end of the business, which carried on for a few more years.

 In 1905 the brick mill with its tiled roof was still almost entirely water-powered, with three wheels driving four beating engines and other machinery, though there was also a steam-powered board-making machine. The business closed in c1923(13) after which the buildings stood derelict until just after the Second World War when they were largely demolished, having become dangerous. In 1948 the remainder were acquired, fittingly in view of the mill’s earlier use, by the locally based Penguin Books Ltd(14). They used only the more modern part of the buildings, as a factory and warehouse; the surviving eighteenth-century portion remained in ruins and over the years has progressively disappeared. In 1976 Penguin sold the site to a developer who proposed a scheme for it involving the restoration of one of the wheels, part of which still survived, to working order, and this received outline planning permission. Attempts by Hillingdon Borough Council the following year to demolish the surviving northern and southern walls of the mill, in order to construct a new bridge over the river, led to a public enquiry in which the West Drayton Local History Society stressed the prominent part the mill had played in the history of the area and the employment it had given to many local people. In their view the demolition would be an act of vandalism. Reference was made to the proposal for restoring the waterwheel (which in the end was not carried out). The Secretary of State allowed the demolition of the northern wall but refused that of the southern, most of which was eventually cleared away in 1995. The remaining few feet have been incorporated in a new block of flats. Through an opening in a square excresence on the wall, which seems to be original, the metal wheel, which appears to be of (lower?) breastshot type, may be inspected from the pavement which runs alongside the building. The rim and spokes survive but the buckets have gone. The original brick supports for the bearings have been retained. Through another aperture to the left the pit wheel, also metal, is visible, along with a gear of smaller diameter mounted on the axle.(15)   

(1)   Domesday of St Paul’s (Camden Society), 99

(2)   LMA Acc.446/ED7

(3)   LMA Acc.446/ED 10, 11

(4)   LMA Acc.446/EM 38

(5)   LMA Acc.446/ED 28/EF 15/2; E178/1430; Acc 446/M3 (Court Roll, 1552)

(6)   LMA Acc.446/ED 34, 35

(7)   Shorter, Paper Mills and Paper Makers in England 1495-1800 (Paper Publications Society No.6)

(8)   LMA Acc.446/ED 40; EM 35

(9)   Shorter, Paper Mills etc; LMA Acc.446/EM 36; DRO 1 (WD)

(10) Shorter

(11) Report of Committee of Magistrates on Public Bridges in Middlesex (1826), 248

(12) Shorter

(13) Kelly’s 1923, 1926

(14) Local information (per VCH)

(15) Visit by author 11th January 1998

(5) West Drayton Mills, January 1998 (Guy Blythman)

(6) West Drayton Mills and mill house, January 1998 (Guy Blythman)

(7) West Drayton: remains of waterwheel, January 1998 (Guy Blythman)

(8) West Drayton: pit wheel, January 1998