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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Greensleeves on Sunday 12 July 20 11:54 BST (UK)
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Can anyone tell us the difference between a Miller and a Millwright? Jan Groom and I are researching the history of a Welsh water mill, and we're trying to establish how old it might be, and who were the millers who lived and worked there. The current buildings are thought to date from the late 18th/early 19th century, although we have found evidence that there has been a mill there, or nearby, since at least 1308.
In the 1841 census we have Jonathan Williams, born about 1781, Breconshire and he is shown as being a Millwright. We know he was there in 1815 as he gives the Mill as his address for the baptism of his son. He died in 1851 and the 1861 census shows a William Moore there, and he is a Miller. We have also found other people shown as Millers or Millwrights in the village at various times who have not lived at the mill itself - although there were two other mills fairly close by.
So, would anyone like to explain to us the difference between a Miller and a Millwright - and would a Millwright live at a mill and run it, or would he be likely to employ a Miller as well? Also, later on it seemed that millers sometimes advertised themselves as 'miller & engine driver' so we'd be interested to know what kind of engine that would be, and how the two are connected.
We'd be interested to hear from people who know more than we do about milling!
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Millwright: The term originated in corn mills, etc., where water power was used, when the tasks of fitting, erecting, gear-cutting, etc., both in wood and metal, were performed by a millwright.
Miller: I. A person who grinds corn, and related uses.
1. A person whose trade is the grinding of corn in a mill; the proprietor or tenant of a corn-mill. Also, a person in a mill who has charge of the actual grinding.
Stan
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No expert but from searching for "millwright" it describes it as a skilled craftsman who maintains, repairs machinery whereas an actual miller would be the person milling the flour.
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Thank you both for your interest and help with this. We are wondering why there was a millwright living at the Mill between 1815 and 1851. Is it likely that he would be doing the milling? Or would he be doing the technical stuff building and/or repairing this and other mills? Incidentally, the mill was owned by the Ashburnham Estate, the mill was leased to someone who then let it to whoever was running it at the time.
We're going to be writing the history of the mill, including the history of the families who lived there, and we don't want to portray this chap incorrectly, hence the need to get our heads round exactly what millwrights do, as opposed to millers.
The mill in question is a water-mill with an overshot wheel; there is a suspicion that the original mill was a short way further upstream with an undershot wheel, but that's another matter altogether. It was originally a fulling-mill but was later converted - we know not when - to grind corn instead.
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https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/254006/Moher,%20James%20-%20PhD%20Dissertation%20updated%202016.pdf;sequence=1
and;
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CCe-kXSRkoUC&pg=PA1174&lpg=PA1174&dq=millwrights+welsh&source=bl&ots=ritHM3U9wJ&sig=ACfU3U21xzXTc9hk2W0WSxe7dUrgbdaZng&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB5OLn48fqAhUKZcAKHd-JDRUQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=millwrights%20welsh&f=false
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http://welshmills.org/?page_id=694
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The trade was regarded as highly skilled so he would have undergone an apprenticeship.
Usually around the age of 12 so would have received his papers around 1802.
Unlikely to be the owner by 1815 unless he had legacy as it wouldn't have been cheap to buy.
He may also have repaired & maintained other mills in the area.
To find whether he eventually went on to own or lease it you would need his will.
Later in the century & with the arrival of the steam engine some mills converted to other uses.
Metal rolling & tube drawing being a couple, so the engine driver (& you often see the word static in brackets) ran the steam engine that rotated the wheels or stones. Grinding gypsum was another use.
So are there any metal rollers or tube drawers in the area which might indicate this has happened.
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Couldn't it be that someone with a practical bent, growing up in or around a Mill, would gain the skills either formally or informally to sort out the machinery, and hence to be a Millwright; or that someone who was a Millwright, and accustomed to dealing with machinery at various mills, might, if the opportunity occurred, take to milling as a Miller?
(I'd always taken it that a Millwright sorted the machinery out, setting things up, etc, and was quite highly skilled, and that a Miller would have managed the day-to-day work of Milling and bagging, and selling the flour?)
TY
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Trade Guilds were very protectionist & although it wasn't an offense to call oneself a tradesman
they would have made it difficult for that person to get work.
To be a member of a Guild one would first have to undertake an apprenticeship.
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Milling corn and other food crops wasn't the only thing that a wind/water mill was used for. The fabric known as linen was made from the stalks of flax and the flax seeds were crushed in the mills to produce oil.
I was brought up in a sea port where there were several mills crushing seeds and turning out oil for lighting and other uses.
Your millwright would be kept very busy.
"wright" a person who constructs/builds things such as a wheelwright; shipwright; millwright. even "playwright"
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Wonderful answers ,my initial thought was that as we talk about things being “milled to a thou“ie ground or milled to a thousandth of an inch a millwright might also be a craftsman who repaired or made things like precision tools .
Viktoria.
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I agree Viktoria - wonderful answers from everyone, thanks so much for your interest.
One thing we have discovered from our research is that there were milling families in the area, and they moved from place to place. Herefordshire seems to have had a particularly rich seam of millers and millwrights, and many of them spent time working the mills in this area of Wales.
Interestingly, the mill we're researching is one of the few working water-mills in Wales, where we produce various types of flour. The mill was renovated about ten years ago thanks to lottery funding, and is run by a large number of volunteers. The job of a miller, I discover, was a very hard one, as we can see from the present-day situation. Every now and then there are problems with the mill wheel which calls for all sorts of engineering and carpentry; I can understand why the sons of many of the milling families became carpenters and joiners, so they were on hand to repair the machinery when it went wrong.
Sadly nearly all the millers we've been researching died relatively young - two in their thirties. We also came across a horrendous story of a miller in Herefordshire who was disembowelled when his clothing caught in one of the wheels. I told this to the duty miller on the day I discovered it; he was wearing a fleece with strings hanging down from the hood, and he immediately asked me to cut them off. Very wise.
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To find whether he eventually went on to own or lease it you would need his will.
Unfortunately he doesn't appear to have left one.
This research is proving very interesting, especially one particular family that we have become quite fond of. Some of the miller's wives must have been very strong willed women - one in particular took over as the miller after the death of her husband.
Several of the millers were also carpenters or hauliers.
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,my initial thought was that as we talk about things being “milled to a thou“ie ground or milled to a thousandth of an inch a millwright might also be a craftsman who repaired or made things like precision tools .
Viktoria.
That would be using a milling machine. It is a machine that uses rotary cutters.
https://youtu.be/nwzBcGXZn5s
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Don't know about Wales but in Scotland a mill was owned by the laird who leased his mill to a tacksman, a miller in this case. The estate tenants (the sucken) were thirled to that mill & could use no other. The tenants also had to provide so many days free labour (thirlage) to the miller for cutting peats for the kiln, maintaining the fabric of the mill & water supply, new stones etc. The miller also had the power to break the tenants hand-querns if he suspected they were being used, so a miller was not always a popular man but very much his own man. The percentage (multures) charged by the miller for grinding the corn varied from estate to estate, plus a little (sequels) for his assistant. Meal was a substitute for cash which was always in short supply. He paid his rent to the laird with the multures he charged the tenants & the surplus he sold at market for cash. A good miller did much of the millwright work himself & had to dress the stones regularly. The mill-croft supplied the table & a miller had to have a horse to get the meal to market so a side-line as a haulier fits in. "Fat as a millers pig!" was a true-ism! ;D
Skoosh.
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"wright" a person who constructs/builds things such as a wheelwright; shipwright; millwright. even "playwright"
I was intrigued when I settled in this part of Cheshire to find that a local garage was owned by a Wainwright, a variety of Cartwright I suppose.
And let's not forget that the first important English canal engineer, James Brindley, had begun life as a millwright. Self-taught and mainly illiterate, but clearly had a natural talent.
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Lots of the major engineers, civil and mechanical, trained has millwrights.
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Lots of the major engineers, civil and mechanical trained has millwrights.
I would guess they would have started in large C19 power-mills, rather than the water- or wind-powered C18 outfits which James Brindley would have known.
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Andrew Meikle & John Rennie. And William Fairbairn a little later who wrote a Treatise on mills and millwork; https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=5zkDAAAAQAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA4
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Of interest maybe; https://voxeu.org/article/human-capital-millwrights-and-industrialisation-18th-century-england
and; http://www.rootschat.com/links/01ppp/
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Lots of the major engineers, civil and mechanical trained has millwrights.
I would guess they would have started in large C19 power-mills, rather than the water- or wind-powered C18 outfits which James Brindley would have known.
There are still some of us alive who knew that factories in our town were powered by the old fashioned soot covered wind/water mills sited along a few of the town's industrial roads, whether they still had sails or not.
Funny thing is that as children my brothers and I never got excited about those mills, but we did whoop with joy when on a family outing and we'd see Skidby mill standing atop Skidby Hill, obviously working because the wind was turning the structures.
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There are still some of us alive who knew that factories in our town were powered by the old fashioned soot covered wind/water mills sited along a few of the town's industrial roads, whether they still had sails or not.
Funny thing is that as children my brothers and I never got excited about those mills, but we did whoop with joy when on a family outing and we'd see Skidby mill standing atop Skidby Hill, obviously working because the wind was turning the structures.
I doubt that many people alive today (I am over 80) will be able to recall many industrial mills powered by wind, tho some may have still been driven by water. As you say the mills were soot-covered, it's more than likely they were coal-powered, because both wind and water could fail from time to time.
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"wright" a person who constructs/builds things such as a wheelwright; shipwright; millwright. even "playwright"
I was intrigued when I settled in this part of Cheshire to find that a local garage was owned by a Wainwright, a variety of Cartwright I suppose.
You're correct, a Hay Wain was a specific wooden cart pulled by a horse (and then later on by an old fashioned tractor), originally used in the days when crops were harvested by farmhands using scythes and sickles
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James Watt from Greenock served his time as an instrument-maker mid 1700s, he set up shop in Glasgow working for the University. He was not a burgess therefore not member of any of the trades guilds so a row ensued. The University claimed immunity from the Trades House influence so Watt continued working on University property on improving the steam engine.
Skoosh.
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Don't know about Wales but in Scotland a mill was owned by the laird who leased his mill to a tacksman, a miller in this case. The estate tenants (the sucken) were thirled to that mill & could use no other. The tenants also had to provide so many days free labour (thirlage) to the miller for cutting peats for the kiln, maintaining the fabric of the mill & water supply, new stones etc. The miller also had the power to break the tenants hand-querns if he suspected they were being used, so a miller was not always a popular man but very much his own man. The percentage (multures) charged by the miller for grinding the corn varied from estate to estate, plus a little (sequels) for his assistant. Meal was a substitute for cash which was always in short supply. He paid his rent to the laird with the multures he charged the tenants & the surplus he sold at market for cash. A good miller did much of the millwright work himself & had to dress the stones regularly. The mill-croft supplied the table & a miller had to have a horse to get the meal to market so a side-line as a haulier fits in. "Fat as a millers pig!" was a true-ism! ;D
Skoosh.
It was more or less the same in the British territory of the Kingdom of Hanover on the European mainland, given to King James of Scotland as a dowry payment when he gave permission for his granddaughter Sophie to marry. (which is why we have many places in the UK that carry the name "Brunswick")
I have an ancestor Franz Flamme who was the miller of Liebenberg and I found a letter put online by the archivist that showed the locals were extremely annoyed that the cost of milling their crops by the new mill cost far more than being milled in the old mill. The maternal side of the family were the Ehlers who worked in the flax fields (Flachstockheim) and again the archivist had put descriptions online of a young woman's dress caught in the cogs of the wheels being dragged and a young man tried to drag her free - both were crushed and died.
Please do not ask me to give any Saxon urls because the layout of them have changed so much plus the contents have also changed.
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wagon-builder," Old English wægn-wyrhta;
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Yes the “ Wright” pertains to the making or repairing of something.
I think the usual term for someone who grinds corn in a corn mill is simply Miller.
Wain Wright
Wheel”
Cart “
Ship “etc.
The millstones would from time to time have their grooves re ground, another specialised job.
The textile mills had a great many specialised jobs ,so much machinery, some of which due to night shifts etc never stopped but once a year for inspection and maintenance/ repair.
This was done at “ Wakes week” when all employees in production of thread or cloth would get a holiday (,at first not paid!) because the machinery and boilers etc would be literally “at a standstill“.
Eee by gum, life wor’ard!
Went to Ellen Road late last year as the great engine was in full power .
The mill has long gone but the engine remains ,all those people, mainly men ,just standing watching this shining brass and steel monster smoothly running
as it always did, controlling the lives of so many people .
If I remember correctly there were seven floors of machinery all driven by this one engine.
So smooth and not really noisy at all.
Working the first Sunday of the month .
Viktoria.