Exploring Longford's Mill on the Avening stream

As I'd feared the weather forecast was correct this morning when I got up to make tea and run a bath. It was tipping down with rain and the sky was grey and gloomy and the wind was gusting. I needed to be on the far side of town by 9-15am to set up for a group portrait of all the editorial team who are producing the book for Stroud Preservation Trust. I was pleased to find everyone was jovial when they arrived at Camilla's and kept my spirits up. We needed to take the picture outside, and luckily there was a tree in the narrow lane which sheltered the subjects and a small bush on the other side of the road protected me from the worst of it. The rain did slow down enough to get a few pictures which were just about good enough.

There was also a rush as three of the five subjects had to go with me about six miles south of Stroud to near the source of one of the Five Valleys, the Avening stream, which flowed to Stroud through Nailsworth. We are all trustees of Stroud Preservation Trust and we had been asked to meet members of the Textile Trust to view inside an ancient industrial mill site called Longford's Mill. They have been offered a large part of one of the mills in the large complex of building s there, some of which are about to be developed for housing, which is now a common way for these building s to be restored.

The mill we went to inspect is Grade 2* Listed and is in reasonably good condition having been restored in relatively recent times. The Textile Trust wanted our opinion on whether their proposals for using the building as some sort of textile centre' to celebrate the fine industrial heritage found locally in the Stroud valleys. The Preservation Trust has now had a thirty year history of restoring a whole range of industrial, mercantile and domestic buildings but we don't have a specific project at present after we found tenants for the Brunel Goods Shed in Stroud.

Ian and Tony from the Textile Trust are old friends of the Preservation Trust and are highly respected as historians, but they don't have the building experience that we have. So we needed to discuss possible ways of working together in this particular mill, with a key requirement being the need to raise substantial funds.

I have added a lot of other photos on my Flickr gallery showing various parts of the building. I can't go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that I was very impressed by these wonderful spaces on the various floors of the two separate mill buildings, which you can see side by side in the pictures, straddling the stream below the mill pond.

The basement level still has three separate machines to create energy for the mill, which I gather is quite unique, as they are all from different eras. The mill was active in quite recent times and we found some interesting graffiti on one of the upstairs stone windows dating from the 1920s and 1940s. I have added a picture of it on the flickr site:
'Dec. 24th 1925 H Close was wearing a new (something) (hat, possibly?)
for the first time in 12 years
HE IS STILL WEARING THE SAME
CAP FEBY 1940 '

On the same top floor, but in the next building, which we got to by descending down a few stairs through the end wall, we came into this enormous space which I really liked, so I am blipping it.. On the floor are some metal parts of an old spinning machine which the Textile Trust have just brought here from their store. All these parts are from one machine and they will put it all back together in due course and get it running again. They want to install a whole range of machines which they have rescued over the years as part of their exhibition. At present they still run a few guided tours of the Dunkirk Mill Centre offering a wonderful opportunity to see a massive working water wheel directly powering a rare piece of historic textile machinery. The overshot wheel, twelve feet wide and thirteen feet in diameter, was installed in the mill in 1855.

After leaving the mill I had to take another portrait at the Old Convent in Stroud, before grabbing some lunch and then doing some Mac advice for Hugh, one of our trustees. I then managed a bite of supper before going to a meeting of the town council which didn't end until after 9-30pm this evening. I could rabbit on about these wonderful places but bed is calling.

From an online history:
Longford's Mill, on the Avening stream at the south-west corner of Gatcombe wood, was recorded from c. 1300 when Mabel of Longford held it from the manor by rent and seasonal works. William of Longford was recorded as a miller in 1333 and he or a namesake held the mill until fairly late in the century. Subsequently it passed to John Hampton, senior, and it belonged to the Hamptons' estate in 1463 when the tenant was John Hillier; in 1507 John Reynolds took a tenancy of the mill from Alice Hampton, with whose estate it passed to the lords of Minchinhampton manor. Thomas Elkington was described as a clothman of Longford's in 1591 and William Elkington of Longford's was mentioned in 1620. By 1640 the mill was occupied by the clothier Edward Pinfold, whose son Thomas bought the freehold from the lord of the manor in 1651; the property then comprised a messuage, 2 stocks, a gig-mill, and a grist-mill. Another Thomas Pinfold later succeeded to it, dying c. 1738, and it passed to his nephew John Pinfold who at his death c. 1779 devised Longford's Mill to Lewis Hoskins (d. 1788).
Lewis's son Edward contracted to sell it to Thomas Playne (d. 1789), the tenant under a lease of 1783, and the purchase was completed in 1790. By 1806 he and his brother William were working the mill in partnership and in that year they made the large pond called Gatcombe Water above the site, and built a new mill, powered by 3 water-wheels, called Lake Mill. By a partition of the property in 1813 Peter took Lake Mill and William the old mill buildings but the brothers apparently continued in partnership until 1822 when Peter granted Lake Mill to William in exchange for Dunkirk Mill at Nailsworth. As William Playne & Co. the business at Longfords became one of the most successful in the district, relying largely on the production of 'stripe' for the East India Company's China trade. There were some setbacks, however: in 1829, when the business was being carried on by William Playne's son William in partnership with his cousins William Playne Wise and John Wise, the elder William had to convey the mill to the Tetbury bank as security for a debt of £12,000 owed by the partnership, and in 1834 a strike of the firm's weavers led to the discontinuance of stripe production. Steam-power was introduced by 1815, and in 1839 there were 90 handlooms and a power-loom at the mill. The elder William Playne died in 1850 and the younger William in 1884 when the business passed to his son Arthur Twisden Playne. The firm became a limited company in 1920 when it formed an association with Hunt & Winterbotham of Cam and Strachan & Co. of Lodgemore Mill. Playne & Co. still occupied Longford's Mill, employing 120 people, in 1973; the firm had recently begun to specialize exclusively in the manufacture of cloth for tennis balls.
The buildings at the site in 1973 included Lake Mill, some structures of later in the 19th century, weaving-shops built in 1912 on the site of the old mill-pond, and a large new spinning-mill built in 1951. At Longfords House, just above the mill, the original square block at the west end was built by William Playne c. 1800. A wing containing larger principal rooms was added on the east about 20 or 30 years later and within the same period a further block, containing kitchens and balancing that on the west, was added beyond the dining-room. In the later 19th century a new entrance hall and staircase was built on the north side of the middle range and a conservatory and billiard room added on the south of the kitchen block. The house remained the home of the Playne family until the Second World War when it became a girls' approved school.
The Iron Mill, a short way below Longford's, was originally an ironworks but had ceased to operate as such by 1635. The site was being used for fulling by 1673 when, comprising a messuage and two fulling-mills, it was sold by Thomas Pinfold of Longford's Mill to the lessee Thomas Pinfold of Burleigh.