A Description of Lode Water Mill
Quy Water forms the northern border of the Abbey grounds, which are sited only about 20ft above sea level - but some 50 miles from the sea!
Just upstream of the mill is the top of the mill by-pass, controlled by a sluice.
There is also a small by-pass through the mill, controlled by a smaller sluice.
The mill wheel is built of iron and is about 14ft in diameter and about 9ft wide.
Barry Jordan - © National Trust
It was built to exploit the sluggish flow of the river with a small drop in level
 through the mill. The water turning the wheel is controlled by another sluice arrangement, which allows a jet of water to fill the wheel buckets.
The water flows out from the mill under a small bridge.
Above the bridge is a loading bay for dispatching milled flour, and at the top is a distinctive lucam - a projecting loading entrance with a hoist for the delivery of corn.
Inside the mill there are four floors: the ground floor; the stone floor (on which the mill stones are situated); the two upper bin floors - the top one being an attic.
The drive to the four pairs of stones is achieved via the pit wheel, a wheel on the same axle as the waterwheel some 11ft in diameter, built of iron with wooden teeth.
This wheel drives the iron wallower, mounted on the upright shaft running through the mill, and thus turns the motion through a right angle.
On the upright shaft just below ceiling level is the 'great spur wheel', which drives the gear wheels mounted under each of the four pairs of millstones.
These may be lifted up and down to take any of the stones out of gear.
Near the base of the upright shaft is an iron plate with W RAWLINGS 1868 cast into it.
This date was when most of the ironwork in the mill was replaced or changed from being all-wooden.
There is also a horizontal shaft just below the ceiling driven from the upright shaft via several gears and a chain whose function was to relay drives to various auxiliary machinery in the mill - such as the sack hoist and grain cleaners and flour sifters.
On the first, or stone, floor may be seen the four pairs of millstones, some complete with their hoppers and grain feed mechanisms.
Grain enters the centre of the top-revolving millstone via a shaken chute and is ground in a tiny gap between the millstones, which are specially cut or 'dressed' for efficient grinding.
The resulting meal emerges from the outer edge of the millstones and falls down a chute to the lower floor.
The lower stone is stationary and the upper stone may be adjusted up and down for the correct texture of meal using the adjustable screws and levers downstairs.
Also on this floor is a millstone winch for lifting any of the millstones - each weighing nearly a ton - and a large cabinet which is presumed to have originally been a flour dressing machine.
The next floor is comparatively empty but would have contained the lower parts of the wedge-shaped hoppers whose tops were in the attic.
The attic contains the sack hoist whose job was to raise or lower sacks inside the mill or alternatively outside via the lucam which is level with this floor.
Seen from inside, the weatherboarding is horizontal, but outside it is vertical which is unusual for wind or water mills in Britain.
It is interesting that several windmills in the district are vertically boarded; this form of cladding is characteristic of the millwrighting of Thomas Hunt of Soham.
Lode Mill is one of the few working water-powered flour mills left in Britain; in the heyday of water power there must have been thousands of them.
Restoration of the structure and machinery continues; planned work includes the construction of a new wooden crown wheel on the top of the upright shaft, which will drive the reconstructed flour dressing machine, and the addition of grain bins to the bin floor.
The National Mills Weekend
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