MSO9360 - Paper Mill, Lady Street, Dulverton (Monument)

A mill is shown on historic mapping. The present building may be 18th Century and was identified as a paper mill, though this was probably further upstream; the building may actually have been a grist mill. The property is now a house.

A mill is shown at this location. [1] 'Paper mill' is printed on the 1970 Ordnance Survey map. [2] Where Lady Street joins Northmoor Road, Paper Mill House incorporates a cottage known as The Birdcage. The paper mill itself was a separate building sited upstream (now demolished), while the present house may have served as a grist mill. [3] A small building is shown on the 1790 map at the junction of the mill leat and the stretch of road then called the Strand. [4] A three storey building of painted stone rubble with timber lintels and small casement windows. It probably dates from the 18th century. [6] Papermill House is clearly shown on a 1790 map of Dulverton as a narrow rectangular building in a plot between Northmoor Road and the town leat. Part of the former mill building survives (32 Northmoor Road). It is three storey, built of stone rubble with timber lintels and small casement windows and probably dates from the 18th Century. Very little is known about the paper mill at Dulverton. Manuscript notes for a study of the paper mills of Somerset refers to ‘Paper Mill House 1818’ and the reference book for the 1820 map of Dulverton shows four buildings on this plot, all under the heading ‘Paper Mill’, with the earliest building clearly shown as plot 295. The surviving structure is clearly an important part of the history of Dulverton’s mills and further study of both the surviving fabric and documentary evidence is needed. [7] A building known as the Paper Mill, which may have had a water wheel. The mill was never associated with a wheel pit or vertical drop in level as part of an original design of the leat, so cannot have been an original feature. A wheel pit with vertical drop could not be constructed here without radically disrupting the functioning of the rest of the leat and all the mills downstream. In the absence of a vertical drop, releases of water from the sluice might have been required to provide motive power for an undershot wheel. For these reasons a mill at this location would not have been particularly powerful or effective, and was perhaps not very long lasting. [8] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [9] A further NRHE record gives the following information, which appears to relate to this building: "The building was originally a fulling mill, which later became a paper mill. By the end of the 19th Century its waterwheel helped to provide Dulverton with electricity using a Crompton alternator. Only the converted building remains now." [10-12]