Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on December 09, 2002 at 22:37:50 from 195.93.49.13 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Tide Mill (Re: Pin Mill and Hamford Water) posted by Ian Wright on December 09, 2002 at 20:49:16:
Woodbridge is one of only three working Tide Mills in Britain at the moment - I fancy - but I may be out of date. There is another working mill at Thorrington in Essex and the Carew French mill in Pembrokeshire.
The late Hervey Benham's "Some Essex Water Mills" lists tide mills at Thorrington, Brightlingsea, Fingringhoe, Battlesbridge, Stambridge, Wakering, St Osyth, Mersea, Kirby (aka Witch's Quay) Heybridge and Ramsey as well as Walton - and that is just Essex!
The reference to a mill at Kirby, cited by Hervey, is in the Domesday Book, by the way! But most tide mills lasted into the twentieth century, if only just.
A tide mill has an undershot wheel, and is worked on the ebb only, using the water impounded in the tide pool, not on the flood. To work the wheel "both ways" would need more in the way of gearboxes than millwrighting could well manage, because you cannot reverse the rotation of the stones. Despite this apparent drawback, the tide mill has the advantage that, unlike water mills in dry summers or windmills in calms, it never runs out of motive power.