Watermills

 The second event I had a ticket for at the Festival was the talk on local watermills by Mary Morgan and Elizabeth Bingham. They've just written a new booklet about the watermills in the area, and visited as many of them as they could.  Considering that they are both in their 80s, they seem to have had a lot of fun scrambling around in ruins, but they also visited watermills that have been converted into family homes, often with the old mill machinery still in place, and even a few working watermills that have been restored.

One of the millers from Talgarth Mill was in the audience, and he said a few words about the mill during the question time at the end.  It's been very dry this year, so the mill can't get up enough speed to actually mill flour, but they can show the machinery working and demonstrate the different parts of the process.

Mary took us through the history of watermills world wide, and Elizabeth described the technology, and then they got onto the local mills.  Local in this case ranged as far afield as Ludlow (where one old mill is now a cafe) and Brecon's Priory Mill.  There was a brief mention, too, of the five or six mills along Cusop Dingle, one of which was a paper mill (it's still called Paper Mill Cottage).  Some mills have open days - National Mill Weekend was a couple of weeks ago, when mills around the country are open to visitors.

They also included a mill in the Golden Valley which is not a watermill - it's the only cider press in the country worked by a horse - whose name is Feathers.  They let visitors help, and bottle some very good cider.

Flour is surprisingly flammable when it's floating in suspension in the air, which happens a lot in mills - and this can cause explosions!  There was a quite dramatic video (Elizabeth had been persuaded out of doing a live demonstration in the tent!).  They also told the story of the biggest flour mill disaster in history, in Glasgow, where 18 people were killed! 

The booklet is being sold partly to raise money to save Boughrood Church roof, and they need £40,000, so I hope they sell lots!