Bourne Mill, Colchester Historical report Dr Chris Thornton December 2007 Report prepared by Dr Chris Thornton Commissioned by Anna Forrest Curator (Interiors) The National Trust East of England Regional Office © The National Trust 2007 2 Contents Preface and acknowledgements 4 Note on abbreviations 5 1 Summary of primary sources 6 1.1 Documentary 6 1.2 Maps and images 8 2 Historic landscape setting 10 3 The medieval mill to c. 1539 19 4 The mill from the Dissolution to the end of the 16th century 24 5 The mill in the 17th and 18th centuries 28 6 The mill in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries 31 7 The mill from 1935 to c. 1980 45 8 Conclusions and interpretation 67 9 Recommendations for further study 76 Bibliography of primary and secondary sources 78 Appendix: list of photographs and images 85 Supplementary Historical report 2015 88 3 Preface and acknowledgements This report has been prepared in response to a commission from the National Trust to investigate the documentary sources for Bourne mill and develop a greater understanding of the site’s landscape, social and historical context. I would like to thank the following individuals and organisations (and their staff) for their generous assistance with this project, including advice on source material, access to collections and manuscript notes, and general discussion and advice: Anna Forrest, Phil O’Donoghue, Martin Atkinson, and Dave Piper, and other staff of The National Trust East of England Regional Office (Westley Bottom); The National Trust Central Office (Queen Anne’s Gate, London); Essex Record Office; Bedfordshire Record Office; Adam Garwood, Sally Gale, David Andrews, Historic Environment, Essex County Council; Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex; Colchester Public Library (local studies); The National Archives, Kew; Professor Nigel Goose, University of Hertfordshire; Elizabeth Williamson, Victoria County History of England; Miss Greenhill and Simon Hudson, Society for the Protection of Ancient Monuments; Luke Bonwick, The Mills Archive; Janet Cooper; Lynette Bloom; Andrew Phillips; Nick Easton and Paul Tritton. All errors and omissions remain the author’s sole responsibility. 4 Note on abbreviations Beds. RO Bedfordshire Record Office Benham, Court Rolls W. Gurney Benham and I.H. Jeayes, Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester (3 vols, Colchester, 1921, 1938, 1941). CPL Colchester Public Library (local studies) Dir. Directory DoE Department of Environment ECC Essex County Council ER Essex Review ERO Essex Record Office n.d. no date RCHME Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England NMR National Monuments Record (Swindon) NT The National Trust OS Ordnance Survey SPAB Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings TNA The National Archives, Kew (formerly PRO) VCH Essex Victoria County History of Essex WRO Wiltshire Record Office 5 1 Summary of primary sources 1.1 Documentary1 Bourne Mill is relatively poorly served by historical sources before the 18th century. For the Middle Ages, when the site was owned by the Benedictine abbey of St. John’s, Colchester, the main sources are the abbey’s chartulary and ledger (memorandum) book and the court rolls of the borough of Colchester. After the abbey’s dissolution in 1539 the mill first passed to the crown and then through various private hands before being purchased by Sir Thomas Lucas in 1590. These property transfers are recorded in various state papers in the National Archives and also in the Colchester court rolls. Although a fair amount of manorial documentation is preserved in the abbey’s ledger book, the original court and account rolls, surveys, leases and other administrative documents have not survived.2 They must have been either lost or discarded after the dissolution of the abbey or were destroyed during the turbulence of the mid 17th century. The Lucas mansion on the abbey site was plundered by a Colchester mob in 1642 during the First Civil War when rumour spread that the royalist John Lucas was gathering men and supplies there to aid Charles I. Later, during the siege of Colchester in the Second Civil War of 1648, the mansion was destroyed.3 For the reasons cited above there are precious few sources covering the period of the construction of the present mill building (1591), and for half a century thereafter. Additionally, the mill is not mentioned in the will of Sir Thomas Lucas (1611), although the neighbouring Cannock mill was recorded therein.4 A Lucas account book survives for the later 1640s providing a small amount of information on the mill’s lessees and rent, but then the documentary record falters again. Two possibilities remain for bridging this documentary gap. First, there may be some references to the mill in the Colchester court rolls for the 17th century, but these would have to be checked individually as they are not calendared and that would be a time-consuming process. Second, further sources may survive in the National 1 For a full list of primary sources see below, Bibliography. 2 See: Rev. Canon J.L. Fisher, ‘The Leger Book of St. John’s Abbey, Colchester’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, XXIV (1951), pp.77-9. 3 John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), pp.32-9; D. Appleby, Our Fall Our Fame: The Life and Times of Sir Charles Lucas (Newtown, 1996), pp.54, 152; VCH Essex, ix, pp.105, 304. 4 TNA, PROB 11/118. 6 Archives which cannot be traced using ‘Bourne Mill’ or similar search terms. All sources potentially containing material on the Lucas family in the 17th century could be searched, although again there is no certainty of any success. By the 18th century the estate had passed by marriage into the Grey family, earls of Kent, and substantial parts of their estate and personal archives have been preserved at the Bedfordshire Record Office. Sources available from 1730 include many leases, and also estate accounts and surveys some of them with maps. These are significant sources as they help to demonstrate the mill’s fulling operations through to the 1820s. Further explanatory material becomes available over the first half of the 19th century, including material on the Colchester baymaker Peter Devall and the oral testimony from some of his mill workers. Detail concerning the millers, mill workers and their families is also available from the national census returns (from 1841) and local directories (from 1848). The role of the Pulford family, lessees in the late 19th century and owners from 1917, can be partly reconstructed from the Bedfordshire Record Office sources, and the census and directories, although a further investigation might reveal some surviving family members with knowledge of the mill. The nature of the available documentation changes after 1936 when A.E. Pulford sold the mill, the pond and part of the land to The National Trust. The Trust’s own archives, at both regional and central level, contain a wealth of information concerning the maintenance and conversion of the structure and the management of the site and of the various lessees, both in official reports, surveys, and minutes, and also in copious correspondence. Most of these files have been checked, but of necessity some of the correspondence has had to be viewed at speed or occasionally sampled. The archives of SPAB have also proved invaluable. Although they often duplicate the material held by The National Trust, they occasionally provide a significant corrective or at least a different perspective. Included in these two organisations’ archives are numerous newspaper and magazine cuttings, reporting changes in management, the mill’s history, or the site’s amenity value. When added to those preserved elsewhere, for example at the Colchester Public Library (local studies), they provide an important source for external and public perceptions of the property. Finally, a journal maintained by a Colchester museum curator, E.J. Rudsdale, has provided yet another viewpoint, this time from a local individual closely involved with the property in the 1940s and 1950s. All of these sources confirm the great difficulty The National Trust has had in managing and conserving the mill and finding an effective purpose for the building and its site. 7 1.2 Maps and images5 Bourne mill is perhaps even more poorly served by cartographic sources than by documentary ones. The earliest depictions of Colchester date from the start of the 17th century, but whilst these include the site of St. John’s abbey they do not stretch far enough south of the town to include the site of the mill. Later, larger scale, maps of the town from the 18th century, such as that included in Morant’s History and Antiquities ……of Colchester (1748), similarly do not cover the area.6 The earliest useful depiction is therefore on the county map by John Chapman and Peter André from 1777 (see overleaf), although the mapping scale at 2” to the mile does not allow for much detail.7 The first maps to reveal detailed information concerning the site’s layout are two estate surveys preserved in the Bedfordshire Record Office from 1797 and 1824. Digital copies have been obtained of both of these maps and they are reproduced later in this report. Normally, one would expect such information to be supplemented by a Tithe Commutation map from the 1830s or 1840s, but Bourne mill is not depicted on the tithe map for St. Giles, of which parish it was a detached portion, or of the neighbouring and surrounding St. Botolph’s parish. The maps do not cover the Bourne mill site and buildings because the land was effectively tithe-free due to its former monastic owner, St. John’s abbey, having appropriated the tithes in the Middle Ages, ownership of which had then passed to the Lucas family.8 The principal topographical sources for the 19th and 20th century are therefore the series of Ordnance Survey maps, starting with the OS 1” of 1805 (first edition, plus the surveyor’s drawings preserved at the ERO), moving through to the important OS 1:2,500 or 25” (first edition, surveyed 1876, and subsequent editions) and the OS 1:10,560 or 6” (1967 edition).