A team of us went out to the site of the former St Catherine’s Place shopping centre to explore the remains of the old Bedminster mill that appears on town maps up to about 1885, when it vanishes.
It’s really unusual to dig this kind of mill site, as normally they are completely demolished and all you’re left with is the very bottom of the wheel pit. But, the Bedminster mill had lots of surviving walls which has made it a really interesting one to explore. The mill was constructed at this location to use water channelled from the nearby River Malago to power the water wheel. Next to the mill, water could be pooled, ready to enter the wheel in a channel called a mill race.
When built, the mill stood in an area of open fields, with only a few other buildings either side of the street, which was aptly named Mill Lane. This demonstrates how important the mill was to the locals, without which people couldn’t get the flour needed to make essential daily foods.
While we were digging, we found a large amount of material that appeared to have been dumped along the river’s edge to stabilise the ground. The dumped material included pottery and glass production waste and dated to 1730-1790. These were industries that Bristolians were involved in at the time. This date matches up with an earlier plan dated to the late 18th century, and documentary sources indicate the mill was in place by 1712. From 1828 it is marked on all the town plans.
In 1828, the mill was owned by R.H. Davis and occupied by Thomas Gough. At that time, there were roughly 3000 people in the Bedminster area. By 1875 this had rocketed to about 78,000 people.
The mill building was in use for over 170 years and the remains we found revealed that many alterations and repairs were carried out during that time. We saw lots of walls that had been rebuilt or replaced with walls abutted next to each other in places. Unlike some of the standing water mills from this period, which are not as complex as the remains at St Catherine’s Place, we had quite a job working out which walls belonged together.
As well as being a building, a water mill is also a machine. We found the wheel pit for the waterwheel, visible as a curved stone lining, surviving to a good depth and across its full width, which gave us the diameter of the wheel. We observed scuff marks in the pit formed by the movement of the wheel when it was running.
As the dig progressed, it became clear that the mill first started with an undershot water wheel (water coming in from beneath), altered later to a breast-shot (coming straight in) and finally an over-shot wheel (from the top). But why? The over-shot wheel added power. With more and more people moving to Bedminster the demand for water from the River Malago for drinking and for industry grew, meaning the supply to the mill decreased over time. Many of the alterations to the building were to keep the mill operating efficiently in response to this diminishing water supply. Documentary sources indicate that at the end of its life, the mill was steam powered, making it more expensive to run as fuel was needed for the engines.
We also found traces of the stone foundations for neighbouring buildings along Mill Lane. As the area began to develop, we found a cellar squeezed into a gap between properties. There was a set of brick steps cut directly into the bedrock and the cellar was filled with lots of rubbish.
During our excavations, we uncovered lots of rubbish left by the people who lived and worked along Mill Lane. This included pottery from bowls, plates, cups, ink pots and even chamber pots, as well as clay pipes for smoking, glass bottles for mineral water, leather shoes, and shells. We also found a large number of mussel shells that had been thrown into a drain. Mussels were collected from the local waterways and sold as street food, so perhaps this haul represents someone’s enterprising sideline.
What struck me most during our work at the St Catherine’s Place was the sheer determination and resilience of the mill’s builders, owners, and millers. Originally in quiet open fields, it was kept it running as a structure and a business, while all around it smelting works, tanneries, coal works, the railway and streets of terraced houses, engulfed it.
Now, this area of Bedminster is seeing a new phase of regeneration that echoes this transformation. Our work uncovering the story of the Bedminster Mill continues, as our specialists undertake more research into the remains we uncovered.
Watch the Bedminster mill episode of Digging for Britain on BBC iPlayer.
