Magot Mill Farm

[toby webb]

Thank you ShaunJ.    3.3.23 ( acres. rods. perches) comes to 3.89 acres  i.e. 3.72 parcel 18      &
3.1.36. comes to 3.475 acres  i.e. parcels 16 & 17.
This with a number of features shared by your 2 maps has convinced me that Fresden & Maggot Mill were one and the same which , of course, is what  Cathy has been saying all along. I would however like to know exactly what was said in the 1941 issue of Geology Proceedings. That will have to wait until I am able to start going out to record offices again.
Thank you all. Toby.

[toby webb]

A further comment on how'Mill' came into the name. West Mill near Watchfield, a little way downstream, was an undershot mill. It would not have been very efficient and depended on having a 'leet' or straight stretch of a stream to get the maximum water speed. There is just that near Fresden Farm for parcel 3 on 1898 issue 25inch O.S. Wilts XI.3 looks particularly interesting as there is evidence of a water by-pass which would be needed when the mill was not being used. Plenty of straights too.
Being the less efficient of water mills may have made it uneconomical and so it might have been  eventually abandonned - fell down or was demolished as a source of building materials. I know of a mill in Dorset which disappeared for just those reasons. T

[Ruskie]

Nice finds Shaun, especially the farmhouse plans which is the clincher.