inscribed and dated "The Mill Race Mill End Hambleden Thurs Sept 10 1861" and signed with initials "TT"
Tom and Laura Taylor and thence by descent
THE most beautiful place in the whole length of the long Thames valley is the white timbered water-mill at Hambleden.
Hambleden Mill has old traditions and ancient lineage, for it stands at an important place on the river and also at the foot of a deep valley which penetrates into the heart of the Chilterns. Up this Hambleden valley went the Romans and later the Danes.
There has been a mill in this place since the Norman Conquest. The rent of Hambleden Mill was worth £1 a year in 1086, and before 1235 the mill was granted to Keynsham Abbey, Somerset. Two water-mills were named in 1338, one of which is the mill now worked by Messrs Barnett at Hambleden.
We walked through a gap by some old cottages, part of the mill buildings, to this water-mill whose shining whiteness is reflected in the Thames. The willows and the little islands with tossing water rushing down the sluices, the mill garden with water running round it, all make an enchanting scene. We went along the narrow bridge over the water, glancing again at the white mill. It is a picturesque and beautiful sight with the wide waters in front of it and the turret with the weathervane on the summit of the building. ...[On a stormy day] the white walls of Hambleden Mill were reflected in the river but the mirror surface was broken and brown. The yellow river was throwing itself under the bridge and sweeping down the weir, and on the islands the willows were silver in the wind. Through the open door of the mill we could see the belting of the machines and the white dusty miller's men working there.
One happy day we visited this mill and were taken over it. We saw the old bevelled gear with apple-wood teeth used long ago, hut now almost a museum piece. The mill has been made up to date in recent years with water-turbine instead of the water-wheel and steel rollers instead of the old millstones. The mill stream runs past the mill, through the turbine and round the little field where the ducks and willows enjoy the scene.
We saw the many processes through which the wheat goes in its transformation from the grain to fine flour, and we watched the moving belts and the intricate, and at the same time simple, changes in the separation of semolina and bran. First the wheat is passed through a wheat-cleaning separator, when all the scraps of string and straw are removed. Then it goes through the barley and cockle cylinders. This is a remarkable machine, fascinating in its work, for the wheat ears are swept into one part, and the barley, slightly smaller, falls through another sifter. The process is repeated in another machine for the removal of cockle seeds. I held a handful of the little black seeds of kilvers, as they call them here, really cleavers, I think, which were in the cockle sifter. The wheat then goes through emery-scourers to break up any dirt.
When the wheat is clean the milling proper begins. At this modern mill they use a four-break roller system by which the bran is separated from the semolina. The bran, of course, is the outside sheath of the wheat, made from the thin layer under the husk, called the "bees wing”. I dipped my hand into the bran and tasted it. A most delicious food, thought I, and I envied the animals who would eat it.
We saw the old millstones, made of French burr, a stone imported from France. Before French burr was used Peak millstone came from Derbyshire, a hard grit-stone. The French burr is at metamorphic stone, harder than the millstone. These round millstones are cut by hand with a chisel into lines radiating from the centre. These grooves are called "furrows”, and the spaces between them are called "lands”, a metaphor from ploughing. An old Bucks labourer tells me that he used to cut these stones with a chisel-hammer when he was young. It is an art in itself. The "land" is in the shape of a harp, and "harp strings" or drills are often cut so finely that there are twenty of them to an inch. They are chipped out of the "land”. So these old millstones are covered with a most delicate design of lines radiating between the spaces.
The milling proper consists of breaking up the semolina and rolling it and dressing it through a machine with a silk cover. In old days men called boulter-men used to go round the farms to dress the flour when fine white flour was wanted. Now it is all done in the same mill.
The germ is separated from the wheat in the break-up of the grain. We tasted a pinch of the germ which fell in a heap from the grain. It is a very sweet and delicious thing, this centre of the wheat. This germ goes to Vitamins Ltd. for the manufacture of Vitamin foods.
The flour is sifted through silk cylinders, and I saw pieces of the fine white silk. This is called scalper separation. Smooth rolls grind the semolina into flour, which is dressed on centrifugal dressers in which there is a combination of air action and sieving action.
We went up flights of wooden stairs and down flights, and up flights again, following the course of the flour in its many journeys between the machines. It goes up hill and down, and a bucket carrier takes it along travelling bands. Some of the timbers of the mill are extremely heavy and very ancient, and it was a joy to walk in this old building. The top room of the mill under the cupola is a romantic room with stout roof beams and curving timbers, and windows looking out over the Thames.
In the wall of the mill by the water's edge there is an upper door and pulley by which the sacks of flour were lowered to boats. Now most of the flour is taken away by lorry. Close to the mill is the mill house, a pleasant looking dwelling place of old red brick with lawn and cedar tree.
1955: Grade II Listing -
Former mill, now 10 apartments.
Late C18 wing at S.E. end, with early C19 wing to N.W., altered c.1970.
Shiplap boarding, painted white, with brick plinth and brick wall to ground floor by former mill-race.
Late C18 wing has half-hipped plain tile roof, later wing is slated. Late C18 wing is of 3 storeys and attic, and 3 x 3 bays. C20 wooden windows, mostly tilting casements but with sashes to first floor of S.E. front, and horizontal sliding sashes to second floor and attic in S.W. end.
S.E. front also has 2 skylights, central C20 double doors with gabled hood, and lean-to to right. Rear wing is of 2 storeys and attic,and 9 bays. Similar tilting casements, one skylight. Third bay has double half-glazed doors to ground and first floors, the upper doors with wooden balcony. Passage entry in right bay. Central square lantern with pyramid lead roof and weathervane. Low wing with C20 sashes, skylights and doors along N.E. side.
Tom Taylor (19 October 1817 – 12 July 1880) was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine. Taylor had a brief academic career, holding the professorship of English literature and language at University College, London in the 1840s, after which he practised law and became a civil servant. At the same time he became a journalist, most prominently as a contributor to, and eventually editor of Punch.
In addition to these vocations, Taylor began a theatre career and became best known as a playwright, with up to 100 plays staged during his career. Many were adaptations of French plays, but these and his original works cover a range from farce to melodrama. Most fell into neglect after Taylor's death, but Our American Cousin (1858), which achieved great success in the 19th century, remains famous as the piece that was being performed in the presence of Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated in 1865.
Early years
Taylor was born into a newly wealthy family at Bishopwearmouth, a suburb of Sunderland, in north-east England. He was the second son of Thomas Taylor (1769–1843) and his wife, Maria Josephina, née Arnold (1784–1858). His father had begun as a labourer on a small farm in Cumberland and had risen to become co-owner of a flourishing brewery in Durham. After attending the Grange School in Sunderland, and studying for two sessions at the University of Glasgow, Taylor became a student of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1837, was elected to a scholarship in 1838, and graduated with a BA in both classics and mathematics. He was elected a fellow of the college in 1842 and received his MA degree the following year.
Taylor left Cambridge in late 1844 and moved to London, where for the next two years he pursued three careers simultaneously. He was professor of English language and literature at University College, London, while at the same time studying to become a barrister, and beginning his life's work as a writer. Taylor was called to the bar of the Middle Temple in November 1846. He resigned his university post, and practised on the northern legal circuit until he was appointed assistant secretary of the Board of Health in 1850. On the reconstruction of the board in 1854 he was made secretary, and on its abolition in 1858 his services were transferred to a department of the Home Office, retiring on a pension in 1876.
Writer
Taylor owed his fame and most of his income not to his academic, legal or government work, but to his writing. Soon after moving to London, he obtained remunerative work as a leader writer for the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News. He was also art critic for The Times and The Graphic for many years. He edited the Autobiography of B. R. Haydon (1853), the Autobiography and Correspondence of C. R. Leslie, R.A. (1860) and Pen Sketches from a Vanished Hand, selected from papers of Mortimer Collins, and wrote Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1865). With his first contribution to Punch, on 19 October 1844, Taylor began a thirty-six year association with the magazine, which ended only with his death. During the 1840s he wrote on average three columns a month; in the 1850s and 1860s this output doubled. His biographer Craig Howes writes that Taylor's articles were generally humorous commentary or comic verses on politics, civic news, and the manners of the day. In 1874 he succeeded Charles William Shirley Brooks as editor.
Taylor also established himself as a playwright and eventually produced about 100 plays. Between 1844 and 1846, the Lyceum Theatre staged at least seven of his plays, including extravanzas written with Albert Smith or Charles Kenney, and his first major success, the 1846 farce To Parents and Guardians. The Morning Post said of that piece, "The writing is admirable throughout – neat, natural and epigrammatic". It was as a dramatist that Taylor made the most impression – his biographer in the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) wrote that in writing plays Taylor found his true vocation. In thirty-five years he wrote more than seventy plays for the principal London theatres.
A substantial portion of Taylor's prolific output consisted of adaptations from the French or collaborations with other playwrights, notably Charles Reade. Some of his plots were adapted from the novels of Charles Dickens or others. Many of Taylor's plays were extremely popular, such as Masks and Faces, an extravaganza written in collaboration with Reade, produced at the Haymarket Theatre in November 1852. It was followed by the almost equally successful To Oblige Benson (Olympic Theatre, 1854), an adaptation from a French vaudeville. Others mentioned by the DNB are Plot and Passion (1853), Still Waters Run Deep (1855) and The Ticket-of-Leave Man (based on Le Retour de Melun by Édouard Brisebarre and Eugène Nus), a melodrama produced at the Olympic in 1863.Taylor also wrote a series of historical dramas (many in blank verse), including The Fool’s Revenge (1869), an adaption of Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse (also adapted by Verdi as Rigoletto), 'Twixt Axe and Crown (1870), Jeanne d'arc (1871), Lady Clancarty (1874) and Anne Boleyn (1875). The last of these, produced at the Haymarket in 1875, was Taylor's penultimate piece and only complete failure. In 1871 Taylor supplied the words to Arthur Sullivan's dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea.
Like his colleague W. S. Gilbert, Taylor believed that plays should be readable as well as actable; he followed Gilbert in having copies of his plays printed for public sale. Both authors did so at some risk, because it made matters easy for American pirates of their works in the days before international copyright protection. Taylor wrote, "I have no wish to screen myself from literary criticism behind the plea that my plays were meant to be acted. It seems to me that every drama submitted to the judgment of audiences should be prepared to encounter that of readers".
Many of Taylor's plays were extremely popular, and several survived into the 20th century, although most are largely forgotten today. His Our American Cousin (1858) is now remembered chiefly as the play Abraham Lincoln was attending when he was assassinated, but it was revived many times during the 19th century with great success. It became celebrated as a vehicle for the popular comic actor Edward Sothern, and after his death, his sons, Lytton and E. H. Sothern, took over the part in revivals.
Howes records that Taylor was described as "of middle height, bearded [with] a pugilistic jaw and eyes which glittered like steel". Known for his remarkable energy, he was a keen swimmer and rower, who rose daily at five or six and wrote for three hours before taking an hour's brisk walk from his house in Wandsworth to his Whitehall office.
Some, like Ellen Terry, praised Taylor's kindness and generosity; others, including F. C. Burnand, found him obstinate and unforgiving. Terry wrote of Taylor in her memoirs:
Most people know that Tom Taylor was one of the leading playwrights of the 'sixties as well as the dramatic critic of The Times, editor of Punch, and a distinguished Civil Servant, but to us he was more than this. He was an institution! I simply cannot remember when I did not know him. It is the Tom Taylors of the world who give children on the stage their splendid education. We never had any education in the strict sense of the word yet through the Taylors and others, we were educated.
Terry's frequent stage partner, Henry Irving said that Taylor was an exception to the general rule that it was helpful, even though not essential, for a dramatist to be an actor to understand the techniques of stagecraft: "There is no dramatic author who more thoroughly understands his business".
In 1855 Taylor married the composer, musician and artist Laura Wilson Barker (1819–1905). She contributed music to at least one of his plays, an overture and entr'acte to Joan of Arc (1871), and harmonisations to his translation Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865). There were two children: the artist John Wycliffe Taylor (1859–1925) and Laura Lucy Arnold Taylor (1863–1940). Taylor and his family lived at 84 Lavender Sweep, Battersea, where they held Sunday musical soirees. Celebrities who attended included Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Ellen Terry and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Taylor died suddenly at his home in 1880 at the age of 62 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery. After his death, his widow retired to Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, where she died on 22 May 1905.