Our second Christmas on site after a quiet year, interest is becoming more widespread and our co-ordinator has been invited to address bodies from the Ladies and Friends club at Chester-le-street to the Rotarians at Whickham and Corbridge, they all seemed interested and asked questions after the talk or video.

A local manufacturer, Ovoline lubricants is helping to develop a special grease for our open gears - something that will stay in position and not throw off onto staff and visitors.

The Trust is now erecting a Pole Barn on site, this will give covered storage for some of the Acomb artefacts and also the two big sawbenches from Etal & Ford Estate. In this location it may be possible to have a vintage tractor meeting on site and power one of the sawbenches for a weekend.

Planning permission has also been granted to erect a vintage pole crane on site and this can be used to unload machinery. Included in the planning consent was permission to erect the old steam engine flywheel and crankshaft from Acomb Mill, this will make a nice new feature for next year.

There follows a contribution from one of our members:-

The interiors of water mills are mysterious places - incredibly dusty, with rickety wooden stairs and bewilderingly ingenious gearing, they have a tentacular hold on the environment around them. There are sometimes long leats stretching like extended feelers to higher points on a river. Very often they take their water from a pond fed from several streams, again attaching themselves like pieces of a spider’s web to the environment. At other times they have weirs across a main river acting like giant buffers that scatter afield everything that approaches them. Whether you accept this view or not, let me describe what might be called the insidious involvement of a mill. The tithe map of my area was surveyed in 1838 and, for records, the holdings were given exotic names like 'Side dyke', 'crow’s nook', 'Johnson’s paddy', etc. However, my house is on a slope above a river and the field beside the house and the one below are both innocuously called Mill Field. There is not a mill in sight and there could never have been one of any kind. Unfortunately, unlike bridges and king’s highways there is no public involvement in mills and so records are difficult to find. It was some time before I discovered that a spring source above above me had been channelled into a culvert ('cundy'?) dropping unseen down the first field, appearing for a short distance to change direction in the second, finally making its way to a mill pond from which a covered leat led to an old mill. This mill had originally been fed by a local, but unreliable source. A little extra information from a map led to the dating of this circuitous supply to about 1830.

Mr E W Wilkes
Wall, Hexham

Would any other member like to make a contribution for the spring newsletter?

Trevor, Dec ‘98

Please spread the word If you have friends or family that would be interested in our project please pass on this newsletter.

NEXT NEWSLETTER APRIL ‘99