Investigating old mills and rural industries

Why mills and rural industries are worth your time

Before the railways and mass factory production, most British parishes ran on small-scale enterprise. A watermill grinding corn, a windmill pumping or milling, a village smithy, a wheelwright's shop, a tannery, a brickworks, a lime kiln, a ropewalk — these were the ordinary workplaces that kept a rural economy turning. They also employed your ancestors. If you have traced a family back to an agricultural labourer and got stuck, it is worth asking whether they, or someone in the household, actually worked in one of these trades. The buildings often survive, and so do the records.

This is satisfying research because it joins two strands together: the landscape on the ground and the documents in the archive. You can stand on a footpath and see the millpond, then go home and find the miller's name in a directory and his children in a census return. That combination is what turns a list of names into a place.

Reading the buildings that survive

Start with what you can see. Ordnance Survey maps, especially the six-inch and twenty-five-inch series from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mark mills, smithies, kilns and works with admirable consistency. Compare editions — a building labelled "corn mill" in 1880 may be "disused" by 1900 and gone by 1920, which tells you exactly when a trade declined in that parish.

On the ground, look for the physical traces:

• Watermills: a millpond, a leat or headrace leading to the building, a sluice or weir upstream, and a tailrace running away downstream. The wheel pit may survive even where the wheel has gone.
• Windmills: a round or octagonal stone base, often now converted into a dwelling, or a low mound with a ring of stones where a post mill once stood. Look for the miller's house nearby and a track worn by carts.
• Workshops and small works: blackened brick, wide doorways, a chimney, a hard-standing yard, or a row of cottages built by the trade itself. A cluster of identical terraced cottages in a hamlet often means a single employer.

Local history societies, county historic environment records and the local records office usually hold photographs and sale particulars. Auction notices are gold dust: they describe machinery, water rights and outbuildings in detail.

Tracing the trade through directories

Trade directories are the quickest way to put a business and a name together. They were published for most counties from the late eighteenth century, becoming comprehensive by the 1840s, and typically list a place alphabetically, then by trade and surname, then sometimes by street. Look up the village, find the "Mills (water)" or "Windmills" entry, and note the proprietor.

Because directories were compiled every few years, you can build a timeline. A miller listed in 1851, 1855 and 1861, then replaced by a different surname in 1867, tells you about a sale, a death or a bankruptcy. Check the dates of each edition rather than assuming a neat decade, and remember that small or part-time trades were often missed. Absence from a directory is not proof of absence from the trade.

Newspapers add colour: the British Newspaper Archive end of things in local collections often carries reports of mill fires, accidents with machinery, and inquests. These are grim but they name workers, ages and employers, which can break a genealogical brick wall.

Using census returns to find the workers

The census is where the industry becomes human. From 1841 onwards, returns give occupations, and from 1851 they give relationship to head of household, age and birthplace. Search not just for the head of the family but for the whole street or hamlet:

• Occupation wording matters. "Miller" could mean master, journeyman or a mill hand. "Miller's man", "mill servant" or "corn miller's labourer" points to an employee, not the owner.
• Look at neighbours. Mill cottages often sit in a cluster, and the same surnames recur across generations.
• Women's work is under-recorded. Before marriage a daughter may be listed as a "mill hand" or "sack maker"; after marriage the same work often disappears from the return.
• Follow the children. A son listed as "engineer" or "smith" in a rural parish in 1871 may have moved to a town, which is your cue to check the 1881 return elsewhere.

Note that census night was one night in ten years, so a mill hand working away from home, or a miller at a different mill, will appear where they slept, not where you expect.

Other records that name employers and premises

Once you have a name and a trade, the following usually repay a search:

• Tithe apportionments and maps (mostly 1836–1850) name occupiers and landowners and often mark the mill itself.
• Enclosure awards and estate maps show watercourses, mill leats and access routes.
• Parish registers may record the mill as an address, and burial entries sometimes note the cause of death for those killed at work.
• Poor law records and settlement examinations can describe a man's trade and where he served his apprenticeship.
• Manorial and court records occasionally include mill tolls and rights.
• Insurance records for mills and works give building materials, machinery and sometimes workers' names.

Bringing it together

The most rewarding approach is a single place studied properly. Pick one mill or workshop, collect every directory entry, census return, map and photograph you can, then walk the site if access allows. Write down what you find, with sources, and deposit a copy with the local records office or history society. Rural industries were small, unglamorous and easily forgotten, which is exactly why they need local historians to keep them on the record.