Monument record MDR8574 - Brailsford Mill and mill race, Slack Lane, Brailsford

A mill at Brailsford is listed in Domesday Book, valued at 10 shillings, and probably stood on the same site as the present mill. It appears in Burdett's survey of 1767 and on most subsequent maps. The present building contains a beam in the basement with the date 1693 carved on it. The two storey ashlar sandstone and red brick mill building is quite dramatic, with a large blind semi-circular arch to the first floor, complete with a doorway under the lintel facing. The quality and finish of the construction is high. The large dam in the Brailsford Brook fed the water onto a 14ft diameter iron backshot water wheel. This was removed in the 1940s. Some of the sluice mechanism remains outside, as does the iron gearing, complete with the hand wheel that actuated it. Internally none of the iron machinery remains, but the three sets of millstones still stand on the heavy wooden hurst frame, sited in the basement. All appear to be peak stones and some of the spouts which fed corn into the millstones are still in place. The drying kiln is situated in an extension to the mill building, with the arched hearth in the basement and ceramic tiled floor above, supported on iron bars. At the time of writing [September 1998] the mill was undergoing house conversion, but some of the key features, including the millstones and the kiln, are to be retained. (1)