Sele Mill is a late 19th-century mill building in Hertford, England. It has been converted into apartments. A blue plaque on the building (Plaque #30561 on Open Plaques) commemorates an earlier mill on the site, the country's first paper mill.[1]
History
editFor most of its history, the mill used the power of the River Beane, a chalk stream which joins the River Lea at Hertford. A watermill on this site is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 when it was valued at 2 shillings. Sele at this time was a separate manor from Hertford. Its other resources included ploughland and meadow, but it appears to appears to have been a very small settlement: the recorded population was two households.[2]
In the late 15th century it was converted into a paper mill by an entrepreneur called John Tate. As far as is known, this was the first paper mill in the country. Papermills had a reputation for being smelly, but this one was visited by Henry VII. The king, who had given Hertford Castle to his wife in 1487, visited the mill in 1498.
The papermill appears to have gone out of production around 1500,[3] and the facility was used for grinding corn again. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1890 and was rebuilt. The 18th century miller's house survived the fire.
Mill race
edit
Although water power is no longer used at the site, there is a 20th-century labyrinth weir on the River Beane designed to produce a head of water for the mill race. The River Beane is defined as a heavily modified water body under the Water Framework Directive. There has been a programme of works to improve the ecological health of the river, for example at Woodhall Park,[4] and it has been proposed to modify the weir at Sele Mill which in its current state poses a barrier to fish migration.[5]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Sele Mill: blue plaque 30561". Open Plaques. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
- ^ "Sele". Open Domesday. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^ Richard L. Hills, ‘Tate, John (c.1448–1507/8)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 24 June 2015. Subscription or UK public library membership required.
- ^ "Woodhall Park River Restoration (2020)". 2020.
- ^ "River Beane" (PDF). Wild Trout Trust. 2009.