’This is Forge Lane,’ says the Resident Wise Woman, doing some navigation with her phone. ‘Maybe that’s the forge.’ We have both spotted a picturesque brick building, lit up by the sun, with a nearby gate in which we can pull up and take in the architectural view. We’d both seen the old waterwheel and thought ‘mill’, but it could equally be an old forge. When we look properly we see old brickwork (Flemish bond, probably early-19th century); windows, partly blocked, beneath gently curving segmental arches; and an upper opening for loading or unloading. The windows have their original glazing bars, but two have a single larger pane, which is probably a replacement for an opening section with a pivot half-way up, widely used on 19th-century industrial buildings. I find the brickwork appealing to the eye, even though I know this is a building desperately needing maintenance. This sort of pleasing decay can make a building glow, like the last brief brilliance of an old-style incandescent light-bulb before the filament finally breaks and its illumination is gone for good.
A little research reveals that there was mill here, at the meeting-point of the River Leadon and the Glynch Brook, since the 11th century, but that it became a forge at the end of the 17th century, pig-iron coming from Newent, a few miles away, to be worked. By the early-19th century, it was rebuilt as a mill once more, and this is the building we see today – only the single-storey section at the end is a later addition. The corn mill ran until the installation of electricity at some point in the last century, when the building was used to make animal feed, finally closing in 1995. Has it been used since? For storage perhaps? Whether or not that’s the case, I hope it finds a viable use soon. It seems too good a building to lie idle and decaying, and the light-bulb could soon go ‘phut’.
