This clever arrangement manage to incorporate the idea of both the water for the watermill and the sails for a windmill.  

Courtesy of Tony Stokes

The Watermill

Location: By the River Blackbourne.

Description: Grade II. An eighteenth century farmhouse, with a sixteenth and seventeenth century barn. The watermill itself is nineteenth century and has had most of the machinery removed although the waterwheel is still visible.
    
History:
A watermill is recorded at Bardwell in the Domesday Book, when the Abbot of Bury had two parts of it, and someone else had the remainder. The next mention of this mill is in 1204, when Walter de Sapeston bought it from Philip the Monk for two marks, and let it to William de Horningsheath and his heirs for 6d a year and two marks down, payable at the Feast of St. Edmund. This was followed in 1212-13 by a claim by Walter's widow, Sarra, for money awed to her as a dower.     This mill may or may not have been upon the site of the present one.

The Extent of the manor of Wykes, dating from about 1300, lists as one of the freeholders John Molendinarius, as miller, and it seems likely that his mill is the watermill, as this stands within the manor of Wykes. Further references are elusive and can only be inferred. William Craske, who was a miller from about 1630 until his death in 1660, can be cautiously identified as being at the watermill.
    
In 1819, James Cooke was in possession of the water mill and land and barns, which he had purchased from the Earl of Albermarle, who was at the time Lord of the manor of Wykes.

The Tithe Apportionments of 1839 show Pearson Sharman as the owner of the mill, and George Reach as the occupier.

Recorded Dates of Occupiers after 1839.
1841 & 1844: George Reach
1851 & 1855: Robert Beard
1865 & 1869: Walter Lingwood    
1874 & 1879: Henry Cooke, farmer and corn miller also at Bury St Edmunds
1883 - 1896: David William Taylor farmer, horse and        cattle condiment maker, miller – water and steam.
1900 – 1925 John Henry Ransom and Hector Ransome
1929 - 1937 Powell Bros.

When the mill stopped milling it was stripped of its machinery becoming purely Mill Farm and was owned for many years by Suffolk County Council. In the latter part of the 19th century when the tenant farmer retired, the mill, the farmhouse, and barn were sold into private ownership.

The Windmill

Courtesy of Tony Stokes

Location:  School Road, previous know as Mill Lane.

Description: Grade II tower mill built in 1829, four storey red brick tower.
    
History:
This building was probably built by Thomas King of Thelnetham using parts from a dismantled 1823 mill from Ixworth. It replaced the 18th century post mill sited near the top of Knox Lane.

It was put up for sale by auction in 1847, when it was described as follows:
    “A valuable tower windmill, erected in the most substantial manner, and possessing machinery of the best description. It contains four floors, two pairs of French stones, flour mill, sack tackle, etc. Also a neat slated house, cow-house, piggeries, etc, and four acres, more or less, of superior arable land.”  

From the 1860’s steam was also used to power the mill, so that by 1925 it had stopped working by wind altogether; eventually milling ceased in the 1940’s.

In 1985/6 the mill was again milling flour having been renovated by the previous owner James Waterfield.

In July 1987 Enid and Geoffrey Wheeler bought the Mill and continued milling flour until the windmill was partly destroyed in the Great Storm on the 15th October 1987. In 1989 The Wheeler family started work to restore the damaged mill which proved to be very difficult on limited funds. Work eventually stopped when Geoffrey Wheeler was taken ill; he died in 1995. In 1997 a committee, consisting of local villagers, called 'The Friends of Bardwell Windmill' was set up, with a constitution, to raise funds. English Heritage and St.Edmundsbury Council were approached and both promised grant aid. The total needed for completion was projected in 2000 to be £92,000. English Heritage agreed to give £63,616 and St. Edmundsbury Council £10,000 with the balance raised by the Friends. This money enabled a new cap and fantail to be fitted in the spring of 2004. Fundraising continues to replace the sails.

Recorded Dates of Millers as Occupiers.
1839 – 1861: John Addison
1865 – 1869:  Henry Cattermole
1879 - 1896:  Charles Harrison
1900 – 1922:  Mrs Mary Harrison
1925 – 1937:  Charles Alfred Alderto

The Windmills of Bardwel. 

Additional  information provided in2009 by Ruth Stokes   

The first documented reference to a windmill in Bardwell occurs in the records of Bury Abbey, and dates from about 1280; Lawrence Alwred was the tenant of a house, 18 acres of arable land and a 'molendium ad ventum', a windmill. He held this of Adam de Ingham, a substantial landholder in Ingham, who in turn held it of the heirs of Walter de Hepworth, who were the direct tenants of the Abbey. This suggests that it may have belonged to the Hepworth manor of Reeves Hall, part of which was in Bardwell, but the exact location of the mill is unknown. It had probably been in existence for some time by then, as windmills are believed to have first been built in England in the 12th century.

The earliest mention of a windmill in Suffolk is usually said to date from 1191, when the formidable Abbot Sampson of Bury Abbey fell into a fury upon hearing that Herbert the dean had built one, without the Abbot's permission, just outside the South Gate of Bury. Mills, whether wind, water, or animal powered, were valuable manorial assets, earning tolls on all grain ground in them, and too much competition would reduce the profits the lord of a manor could make.

The next reference we find occurs in a will dated 1456, when Myll Mont Hill is named, with a description that shows it to be near the top of Knox Lane. A nearby field name of 'Between-the-mills', which is mentioned in 1485, suggests the possibility that there may have been two mills in the area at one time.

The same area is referred to as Mill Hill in 1678, and appears under that name on a map dated 1779, which also shows the actual windmill itself. This is a post mill, and the map gives the name of the owner as Sparke. This was Joseph Sparke, who was a farmer as well as a miller. He and his wife Elizabeth had been in Bardwell since at least 1748, when their first child, Joseph, was born, followed during the next twenty years by a further nine children. Where they actually lived remains something of a mystery. There was no house associated with the mill, and the wills of the Sparke family show that they did not own a house in Bardwell, and must have been farm tenants. Joseph senior died in 1784, and his son Joseph ran the mill until he died in 1796, at the age of forty-eight. He had never married, and he bequeathed the windmill to his mother Elizabeth.

Presumably having had to leave the rented farm, Elizabeth took the tenancy of the largest of the Town Estate houses, now Willow Cottage, where she died in 1800, leaving the mill to her spinster daughter Mary. Mary enlisted her nephew, James Cooke, as miller, and by 1805, he had bought the mill from her. James and his wife Hannah had three children born in Bardwell between 1811 and 1816, and by 1819 he also owned the water-mill, which he had purchased from the Earl of Albemarle. But his milling empire was short-lived, as he died in 1822, and the mills were sold.

This was the last chapter in the story of the post-mill in Bardwell, although not the end of its working life, In 1834 it was dismantled, and set up in Hopton by the Thelnetham mill-wright, Thomas King, for Robert Brook. It appeared on the 1887-1891 Ordnance Survey Map, together with another mill on the same site, but sadly nothing now remains of the old Bardwell mill.   

The present tower mill was built in about 1829, containing some parts taken from earlier buildings, as was often done. It belonged to James Nunn, a well-established farmer, who died in 1846, leaving the mill and various other properties, including the Dun Cow, to his son John. The Nunns did not live in Bardwell, and the mill was rented to John Addison, who by 1851 also ran the Dun Cow and the bakery.

By 1855, Henry Cattermole was working as the miller, living in the mill house with his wife Thirza, and in 1862 he bought the property from John Nunn, becoming the first owner-occupier. It was during his time that the engine house and 7 horse-power steam engine were added, so that the sails could be operated by steam power when there was not enough wind. Henry and Thirza continued to live there until 1873, when ill health forced him into retirement, and the windmill was sold to Thirza's brother, Jeremiah Farrow. Their nephew, Charles Harrison, was duly installed as miller, and in 1887 he was able to buy the mill, after Jeremiah's death. Charles married Mary Alderton, whose brother Alfred was married to Charles's sister Julia. Charles and Mary had no children of their own, and after Julia's death in 1894, they took on the care of her two children, Charles and Florence Alderton. Florence died in 1897, at the age of fourteen, and Charles Alderton followed his uncle into the milling business.  Charles Harrison died in 1900, aged only fifty-one, and the mill continued in the ownership of his widow, Mary, with their nephew Charles Alderton as the miller.

The mill ceased to be worked by wind in about 1925, and the sails were removed, though it continued to be driven by the steam engine. Charles Alderton died in September 1941, and his aunt, Mary Harrison, followed him a few months later, in January 1942, having reached the age of ninety-two. This was also the last year in which the windmill worked commercially.    

The fortunes of the tower mill since that time are another story, but thanks to the dedication of the Wheeler family and the Friends of Bardwell Mill, we can now look forward to the time when the mill takes its place once again as a true village landmark. 

Read the Bardwell Windmill page on BardwellVillage.info.