This article was published in the Newsletter 30th January 2026.

WHAT DID THE MILL DO IN EARLIER TIMES?

We now mainly mill wheat for either bread flour or plain for cakes etc. We mill a small amount of the ancient grain Spelt for again bread flour and Rye and Oats. However, probably before the early Nineteenth Century very little wheat will have been milled. It was not a commonly grown crop in the area.

Oats will have always been a major part of the milling business and we know that the milling system for oats was updated in the mid 1870s when the oat roller was installed.

So what else was possibly milled, we have no evidence of what was actually milled as no archive exists for the mill. But looking at other mills with records and general household and farm records we can get a good idea of the grains that were processed.

The two main grains milled for human consumption after Oats would be Barley and Rye, both of which were grown locally with oats. What does seem perculiar is the milling of peas and beans to make flour for bread. Today most crops are grown as monocultures, but it was common  previously to grow mixed crops. So you would plant a mixture of say oats and barley  or barley and either peas and beans. These would be harvested together and threshed before being put through the mill as a mixture. A barley and pea mixture in some areas was called Maslin.

Barley had a number of different names and was called Bigg or Bere in different parts of the country, which can lead to a bit of confusion when reading old texts and documents.

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