In the last three-quarters of a century, the two buildings have probably seen more changes than in the whole of their preceding history. The factory was not part of the Fisherton Mill estate and hence not sold in 1931. Today they are linked and managed as one entity, the ‘factory’ as the bar and guest rooms of the Old Mill Hotel, the mill as its restaurant on the ground floor, domestic living accommodation upstairs. The factory has long been converted towards its present role. The mill has been through many changes. At one stage it was a pottery, marked as such on the 1972 Ordnance Survey map, and there was a kiln where part of the hotel kitchen now stands.
The millstone embedded in the outer kitchen wall is decorative, never part of the mill machinery in any of its manifestations over nine centuries.
So visitors can dine where from the sixteenth century the waterwheel drove falling hammers to make the paper pulp; from the eighteenth century a similar method processed cloth; in the nineteenth century bones were crushed; and finally until the middle of the twentieth century tallow candles were made.
Those staying in the hotel will sleep where the yarn was spun on open floors although the clatter of spinning jennies has long gone.
Michael Cowan
29 July 2007