The Firs and Weston Mill

Details

SJ 22 NE OSWESTRY RURAL C.P. WESTON

5/215 The Firs and - Weston Mill

- II

Mill and attached mill house. Mid-C19 on earlier site. Roughly coursed local grey limestone blocks with yellow brick dressings; slate roofs with deep eaves and verges. Mill is of 4 storeys and rectangular plan with pedimented gable ends to east and west, east with boarded doors on each floor, flanked by windows at ground-floor level and with bracketed weatherboarded hoist projection to top, west with circular window to apex. North wall has 4 segmental-headed windows on each floor; mullioned and transomed casements, some retaining leaded lights; similar paired windows to centre of south wall on second and third floors, lower left blind. South wall also has outline of demolished lower gabled structure visible to right. Massive iron undershot wheel (still in working order) is housed under segmental arch to rear of adjoining mill house (The Firs) to west. This house is of 2 storeys and 4 bays to front (north), late C20 windows with original yellow brick cambered arches; C20 door with rectangular overlight in C19 pilastered doorcase in third bay from left; yellow brick ridge stack to left and end stack to right; lower range to right. C20 casements to rear (south) wall. INTERIOR of mill has oak winder stair rising to fourth floor in north-east corner; against the west wall on the ground floor is the pitwheel which meshes with a pinion on a horizontal shaft running a little above floor level, parallel to the south wall of the mill, the shaft being mounted within an iron hurst frame, the lower part of which is cased in timber, the cast-iron hurst columns rising to cast-iron stone pans on the floor above. The first floor has 4 pairs of French burr millstones, one runner marked "Davies & Snead, 19 & 21 Cheapside, Liverpool" and two others "Cotton & Davies, Cheapside, Liverpool". All the stone furniture is missing but the upright shaft rises to a bevel gear and then continues to the floor above, the bevel gear meshing with a pinion on a layshaft running north-south across the mill carrying pulleys. The upright shaft continues through the second floor, which has no other machinery, to the third floor terminating above a bevel crown wheel which meshes with a bevel gear on a layshaft running east to west. The fourth floor has 2 hoist drums, one made of timber, the other of iron driven from a vertical shaft; towards the western end of this floor is a smutter with a vertical spindle, complete with case and fan; king-post roof structure.

The mill pond fed by a leat is situated immediately to the south of the mill house and a well-preserved sluice controls the water flow into the penstock and thence to the wheel. Remains of walls to the south of the mill may be fragments of an earlier mill, the present building being erected after 1841 to replace a woolen mill destroyed by fire. The present mill originally produced corn and cotton but switched to flour in late C19; it ceased working during the 1930s.

N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Shropshire (1958), p.225; information from SPAB Mills Section.

Listing NGR: SJ2965127570

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

255693

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Shropshire, (1958), 225

End of official list entry

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