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Mill History Project - Background
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from Community News magazine
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Mill History Project - Background
Location: Dorset
A Thousand Years of Milling.
 The Town Mill in Lyme Regis is so called because it was owned for most of its very long life by Lyme Borough Council. As a result, there are extensive references to the mill in old Borough accounts which, together with other county and national records, provide a wealth of historical information about the major developments that have affected this water-driven flour mill.
The first documentary evidence of a Town Mill on the present mill site dates from 1340, when King Edward III granted the Borough of Lyme a licence to build a watermill and drive it with water from the River Lym. However, the 1340 mill was built on the site of an earlier, derelict mill and the Domesday Book records a mill in Lyme in 1086, so the history of this mill site could date back a thousand years.
 Technology changes at the end of the 19th Century, especially the development of large modern roller mills using imported grain, made most rural water and wind mills uneconomic. Thousands of mills went out of business and the Town Mill itself closed in 1926. The water wheel was removed in 1936 and the fabric of the mill was allowed to decay until, by the 1970’s, the Town Mill was derelict.
In order to save this historically important mill, volunteers formed the Town Mill Trust in 1991, with the aims of renovating the mill buildings and restoring the milling equipment to working order. Renovation started in 1995, with some buildings converted to art galleries, workshops and a café. Renovation was completed in 2001 when the water wheel and milling machinery were returned to working order. The fully restored Town Mill was formally opened to the public by the world-famous author John Fowles, a Patron of the mill, on 26th May 2001 when grain was milled again for the first time in 75 years.
 Although the fabric and machinery of the Town Mill had been saved, many people seemed to remain unclear about the specifics of its long history, its archaeology and the role of the Town Mill in the social and economic life of Lyme Regis. There was a clear need for a definitive history of the mill, so in 2003, with funding assistance from the LHI and the G F Eyre Charitable Trust, the Mill Trustees initiated the Town Mill History Project to achieve this.
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