Mills
Tasburgh Watermill
The first mention of a mill in Tasburgh is in the Domesday Books of 1086 although it seems likely that there would have been a mill here in Saxon times. The Norman Lords who owned land in Tasburgh only owned a 60% share in the mill with Stratton appearing to have a 20% share and Rainthorpe the remaining 20%. Although Tasburgh did have a windmill, the first mill would have been a watermill as windmills didn't appear in England until the 13th Century but whether it stood on the current site seems doubtful, given the significant diversion of the river Tas from its original course along the Parish boundary that was required to power a mill on the present site. Ownership of a mill conferred important commercial control in medieval times and it is known that Tasburgh mill belonged to the Lord of the Manor of Boylands and Hunts.
Exactly when the present mill stream was dug diverting water from the river Tas , and the present mill building was constructed, is unknown but the first miller for whom there is a record in Tasburgh was Robert Carre who left a will in 1559 as did a miller William Rysinge in 1640. However, from the mid 1700s until the mill closed in 1935 there is a complete list of the millers although not of all the mill owners. After John Nickless and Robert Buck, James Reeve is recorded as the miller in 1803 and he was still running the mill as the tenant in 1816 when it was put up for auction. As there was another 18 years left to run on his lease at a rent of £45 a year, he was able to buy the mill as the sitting tenant and then sold it the following year with vacant possession, no doubt for a good profit.
The auction particulars also refer to a "substantial convenient dwelling house", no doubt the brick part of the current building which faces Low Road, with " a well planted garden, a barn, a cow house, stables and other convenient outbuildings, all in good repair and also (9.78 acres) of most excellent meadow land adjoining the premises with about 360 trees thereon".
The purchaser is believed to have been Robert Bensley, who was recorded as the owner in 1840. He was referred to as a Gentleman from Eaton, who had married the neice of James Reeve, and he let the mill to Zachariah, or Zachary, George whose father, called King George, had been the miller at Costessey. Zachary and his wife Elizabeth had no children but census records show that he employed two journeymen millers, who lived in the house with him, as well as two servants. When Mr George died in 1861, the owner Harriet Bensley, Robert's widow, let the mill to Dennis Blomfield, and his family continued to run the mill as the tenants until 1896. In the meantime, following Harriet Bensley's death in 1867, the mill had been sold to The Honourable Frederick Walpole of Rainthorpe Hall and it remained part of the Rainthorpe estate until 1929 when the estate was lotted and put up for sale by auction following the death of Sir Charles Harvey.
It was during the Blomfields' time at the mill that water powered mill stones were supplemented by a steam powered roller mill with the building of a coal fired boiler. The mill was then capable of producing two bags of flour an hour. Photos of the mill taken before WW1 clearly show the boiler house and chimney standing beyond the mill building. One of the Blomfields' apprentices was William Lant Duffield, who had been born in Tasburgh in 1869, but was shown in the 1871 census as living in Tibenham with his grandparents, presumably as a result of his mother dying when he was very young. His grandfather Mr Lant was the miller there. After learning his trade back in Tasburgh, William Duffield moved to Mulbarton as assistant miller and then set up his own business at Mattishall mill before returning to Tasburgh and taking on a lease of the mill in 1896.
Business prospered and a year later he took on a lease of Flordon Mill and then Saxlingham Mill in 1906, but it seems he over stretched himself and after bad flooding damaged the mills in 1912 he was eventually declared bankrupt in 1916 and had to give up all three mills. However his sons also trained as millers and in 1919 Tharston Mill was acquired and Saxlingham Mill was bought back in 1928 before the company of W L Duffield and Sons Ltd was founded in 1936 and which continues to this day.
From 1916 Tasburgh mill was then let to Robert Watling and in 1925 to A E Thompson & Sons but ten years later the mill closed down and the property was converted to residential use. William Moore in his wartime memories of Tasburgh records that the property was owned by Mr Gordon Murray Jardine. It was again badly affected by the 1947 floods and as part of the restoration a new house was built in the grounds for the gardener as the old cottage he had previous lived in on the other side of Low Road was also washed out and eventually had to be demolished. The mill was then sold to a branch of the Gurney family and by the early 1970s had been bought by Mr and Mrs Birchall with the mill barn being sold off for conversion. Charles Birchall was the chairman of Clays, the printers in Bungay, and his wife Lesley used to give swimming lessons in the summer for some of the local children in their pool. When they retired to live in the Norwich Cathedral Close, the property was sold in the 1980s to Austin and Marianne Haines and she continued to live there until 2019 when the mill was eventually sold after having been on the market for three years.
Tasburgh Windmill
In addition to its watermill, Tasburgh also had a windmill. It was a wooden postmill type and stood in what is now the back garden of Hill House on Low Road overlooking Burrfeld Park. As with the watermill, the date of its construction is unknown but it was recorded on Faden's map of Norfolk published in 1797.
All the watermills along the Tas valley apart from the mill at Caistor St Edmund had a nearby windmill and the two would have been run in conjunction with each other as a single operation. The 1816 auction particulars of the watermill make reference to the windmill as forming part of the estate and operation of James Reeve. Maps from 1826 and 1834 still showed the windmill but it wasn't shown on the 1840 Tithe Apportionment when the land was referred to as Mill House Piece owned by Robert Bensley and let to Zachary George, so it seems likely that the Tasburgh windmill was demolished in the late 1830s.
Certainly by then, old postmills were being replaced with bigger and more powerful brick built tower mills as happened with the Saxlingham postmill in 1834. Tasburgh Lane, Saxlingham was originally called Mill Lane but in 1958 the brick tower was blown up with gelignite and a bungalow, Mill Stones, now stands on the site.
Research carried out by Ben Goodfellow of Tasburgh. Photographs courtesy of the website www.norfolkmills.co.uk.