The first record of mills in Alwalton was in the Domesday Book of 1086 when two were recorded. Three mills were recorded at Alwalton in 1125-28. The mills, which belonged to the manor, were not windmills but watermills, situated on the River Nene, which were reached by Mill Lane. The Hundred Rolls of 1279 tell us that the son of the miller was known as Henry. It recorded another three Millers, but they were all surnames!
By 1649 the mills were known as the ‘Town Mills’ and were likely used for grinding corn into flour. The third mill was known as a ‘fulling-mill’ which would have been used for processing woollen cloth. The cloth needed to be both cleaned and bound together and a fulling mill helped with both processes. Where previously cloth could have been beaten by people with wooden sticks, the watermill replaced the people with large wooden hammers that beat the cloth to both clean and bind it together. The wooden hammers were operated by a cam on the waterwheel that caused them to move up and down to beat the cloth.
By Victorian times the two town mills were still being used to process corn, but through changing trends the fulling mill was used for grinding bones. The slightly macabre practice was used to create a powder used as a fertiliser, which is still sold today. A bone mill in Narborough, Norfolk was known to process both whale and human bones, but there is no record of that happening in Alwalton; the smell would not have been pleasant though.
The mills have long since been demolished, but the diverted river and remaining stones and bricks show where the buildings once were. The land is accessible as part of the wider Nene Park. They can be reached by a short walk down Mill Lane in Alwalton or across the fields from Castor Mill.
References:
'Parishes: Alwalton', in A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 3, ed. William Page, Granville Proby and S Inskip Ladds (London, 1936), pp. 133-136. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.... 12 April 2021].
The Watermill at Alwalton, Peterborough Images Archive, https://www.peterboroughimages.co.uk/the-watermill-at-alwalton/
P. Halsall, Medieval Sourcebook: Alwalton Manor 1279, Fordham University, https://sourcebooks.fordham.ed...
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