95 years young..but George needs help to get his water mill going again
George Harrison just wants to get his watermill going again. But at 95 he can’t do it alone.
Mr Harrison is the custodian of Low Mill near Chop Gate, in Bilsdale, which has recently been upgraded from a Grade II to a Grade II* listing by Historic England due to its remarkably complete condition.
"I will, even if kills me, get this watermill going again,” he declared in a video by Historic England.
“I love this place very, very much. "It would be nice to get it going in memory of my wife who like me loved the mill very, very much.”
Low Mill is fed by a channel from the River Seph, which Mr Harrison believes was dug by the monks of Rievaulx Abbey 800 years ago.
The building we see today was extended in 1785, and has two stones - French burrs for wholemeal flour and Derbyshire grit for barley - but hasn't ground corn for years. Mr Harrison’s late wife Hazel moved to Low Mill, with her first husband Ted Garbutt in 1960.
By then the mill had been disused for many years and the water wheel was in pieces. It was repaired in the 1970s, with sixth form students from Middlebrough coming to lend a hand.
By 1980 it was working again and used to grind corn and beans with an external drive to saw wood.
But an accident while Mr Garbutt was sawing wood led to the wedges holding the wheel in place break loose and float off down the river, with the main axle breaking. Mr Harrison got involved with the mill, after retiring in 1995 and starting to help out with the extensive gardens.
Work repairing the mill began in 2002, four years after Mr Garbutt's death, a massive job as it involved installing a new main axle made from a huge chunk of oak with lignum vitae bearings.
But it now needs repairing again.
George told The Yorkshire Post: “I’m getting older and the mill is taking a lot of money and there’s no revenue from the mill at all. It’s all coming out of my pocket.
"When I’m gone, I’m hoping whoever buys the mill will carry on and keep it going.”
On one occasion he got stuck in the wheel pit for two hours: “That frightened me. I said I’m not going in the hole any more.”
On another he slipped on some damp wood in between the water wheel, which luckily stopped as he fell: “It’s 11ft high and the water pressure is the same as a five horsepower steam engine, so it wouldn’t have stopped, it would have chopped me in two,” he said.
"I’d like somebody here help me make some repairs – a joiner that has left work.
"I know exactly what needs doing – it’s the manpower I need.”
A miller's name appears in a list of tenants from 1538. However a mill is believed to have been built centuries earlier, when the monks at Rievaulx were developing Bilsdale for agriculture through a system of monastic granges or farms.