The River Glaven had 16 mills throughout its length at the time of Domesday.

In Domesday Holt is said to have had five watermills and this is not surprising as the parish is bounded by the river for a long distance. I can trace four of them. One of them is what is called Hempstead Mill, which is actually in the parish of Holt and is a rebuilding early last century.
Basil Cozens-Hardy

In about 1905 the wheel was removed and replaced by a turbine, this being a more efficient way of using the limited amount of available water. The wheel house was split into two sections lengthways by a new wall, each section with its own exit arch and then another wall was built across the section nearer to the mill to provide a sluice control for the turbine.

At the beginning of 20th century, when the turbine was fitted, there were 5 sources of water - mill dam, upper pond (swept away in the 1912 floods) Horsepit Pond, Old Decoy (Selbrigg Pond) and New Decoy.

Horsepit was originally the farm horse pond for Red House Farm, fed by runoff water from the farm and its buildings but the Gurney's added a sluice in order to supplement the mill dam. The mill could only run at full power for a maximum of 5 hours a day without emptying the dam above. Thus in later times a traction engine ran the mill via a pulley wheel on the outside of the building (see below). There were two pairs of stones by W. Tinsley of Ipswich, often only one would be worked due to lack of water. Maximum output was 4 coombs per hour.

John Tuck was both a miller and a coal merchant. He took over from George Bird and was running both businesses from the mill when the above left picture was taken in 1907.

The road on the Holt side of the mill was washed away to a depth of several feet on Monday 26th August 1912. On the left hand photo above, Reggie Preston is inspecting the damage with his sister Mary (on the left) and friend Miss Gooch in the background. The name of the workman is not known.

The Great Flood as it became known, occurred after almost 30 hours of gales and continuous rain from 4.00am on 26th until 9.00am on Tuesday 27th August 1912. Around 8 inches of rain fell.

Prior to moving to Hempstead Mill in 1912, Mrs. Newell was living at the Mill Cottages. When required, the miller at Hempstead would carry a large bag of flour down through the woods to where Frank lived. He had a resting post on the side of the track about half way down.

In 1911 a bakery was built within the complex of cartsheds, haylofts, stables, pig sties and cowsheds. The oven built by T. Collins & Co. of Bristol, was coke fired and the boiler also heated the contents of a twenty gallon water tank above it that then used the heat of from hot water pipes to regulate the oven temperature. Coke was brought in from Holt gasworks or by train to Holt from Sheffield and then horse and cart to the mill. In those days transport cost exceeded the material cost.

The oven had a capacity of 208 1lb loves and was fired up twice before deliveries went out to the surrounding area. Water for the bread making was carried by bucket from a spring on the opposite side of the road.

The turbine also ran a circular saw blade set in a steel bench made by Robinson & Son Ltd of Rochdale. It was used to cut timber for the Gurney Estate. The shed that sheltered the bench has long disappeared.

The turbine was also used to power a generator that was in use until about 1953.

The Newell brothers (Donald, Frank and William) rented the mill from the Gurneys in 1912. It only came with one field but after one year they were allowed to rent two more fields provided they took the bad fields along with the good fields.

In 1914, Frank (b. 1896) and Donald left William, who was disabled, to run the mill while they fought in the war. Donald had 6 beehives that he left in a nearby pit for the duration of the war, sadly only one survived. Donald appears to have survived the war unscathed but Frank, who was in the cavalry, was shot in the leg and spent several months convalescing before returning to the fray. After the war Frank moved to Kelling and managed the Deterding Estate.

By 1920 Donald's bakery at the mill was supplying much of the locality. As a boy, John Clarke started work at the mill by feeding the livestock going on to become master baker. When the demand for bread was high he would often work for 30 hours without sleep. Having undertaken the morning baking starting at 4.00 a.m., he would return in the afternoon. "I suppose looking back, I worked long hours but one didn't think about it in those days. In my spare time I was the village barber."

Donald died in 1947 and Frank then returned to take over the business. Baking ceased in September 1953, when the Norwich firm of Sunblest moved into the area and started a delivery service. New hygiene regulations were also preventing the use of the spring water for bread making.

Ledgers written between 1915 and 1929 indicate that some 90% of all sales related to crushing or grinding corn brought in by customers and from the sale of the resulting bran. Some flour was produced but mostly it was animal feed from oats, barley, wheat and maize. On occasions linseed, peas and beans were also processed.

Prices 1839-1841:

At the beginning of the century there were five immediately available supplies of water to the (Mill, the existing mill pool, the upper mill pool swept away in the 1912 floods, the “Old Decoy'' (now Selbrigg Pond), the ''New Decoy', and Horsepit Pond. There was direct access close to the Glaven from the Mill House to all of these. Each of these stores of water had its own sluice gate.

Mr John Watson, who bought the freehold of the 400 acre woodland along the Glaven Valley in 1965 to the north of the Mill, is sure that the ''Old Decoy'' was on the site of the Selbrigg Pond (which is protected on the north side by “Old Decoy Wood''). It was some time later that the New Decoy appeared some 400 yards to the north east in “New Decoy Woods”. By 1965 this decoy pond had almost vanished owing to silting until Mr Watson dredged it. Mr Watson also removed the silt from Horsepit Pond which he enlarged to its present size. This was originally the farm horse-pond for Red_House_Farm, fed by the run-off of water from that farm and its buildings, but the Gurneys added a sluice so that its water could be released when necessary to augment the head of water in the Mill Pool.

In the late 19th Century Mr George Bird was the miller, as tenant of the Gurneys, to be succeeded by 1907 by Mr J Tuck who also ran a coal-merchant's business from the mill. He was succeeded by the Preston family who must have suffered severe losses and disruption in the 1912 floods when the second (upper) mill pool was swept away never to be replaced - so much so that they gave up their tenancy shortly afterwards.

In about 1916 the Newall family arrived and have been there ever since. The family came from Muswell Hill where the Mr Newall of the day had married a Miss Hannant from North Norfolk by whom he had had five children before (apparently) departing for Canada. The former Miss Hannant (whose family still live in Baconsthorpe) took the traditional step of bringing her family back to Norfolk where the eldest son Donald, helped by his brother William, took on the tenancy of the mill. The youngest brother Frank lived at Beck House Kelling, having taken on the position of managing several farms recently bought by the Deterding family.

By 1920 Mr Donald Newall was carrying on a baking business at the mill. Owing presumably to the reduced need of water, he had in 1916 on arrival put in a turbine and fly-wheel which (later) could be turned by a tractor engine to provide more continuous power. He and William had been able to persuade the Gurneys to add additional land to their tenancy so they also extended their activities to farming “Mill Farm''. This was an odd shaped farm including the Glaven meadows, higher land towards Holt (later to be built upon by Kongskilde), and land adjoining Hall_Farm. The combined enterprise employed seven people between the wars.

In 1947 Donald died and Frank (who had retired from working for the Deterdings) took over the mill. Meanwhile in 1945 Donald had fallen out with Mr George Knight who, having bought the Gurneys' estate, had offered to sell on to any tenants who wanted to buy at an enhanced price. The Newall family had thought that it had been agreed that they should buy at the price which Mr George Knight paid - so they refused to buy and stayed put as tenants.

By 1948 Mr Walter Platford and his family lived in one half of what became Hawksmere. The other half was occupied by the Yarham family. Both worked for the Newalls,

In 1953 the baking enterprise ceased as a result of Sunblest Bread starting its own bread round. ln the same year the generator ceased to work.

As with all water-mills the business of milling decreased and all that was left was the continuing sale of animal feed-stuffs, This continued to the late 1960s. However, a circular saw had been installed and this was still being occasionally run by water power in the early seventies.

The most romantic property in Hempstead, now known as Hawksmere, has an interesting history of its own. It is first shown on the 1841 Tithe Map and probably consisted originally of a pair of cottages overlooking the mill pool referred to in the 1945 sale as the Mill Cottages. The cottages abutted an estate road - bordered by lime trees - laid out by the Gurneys when they built the Mill and its very considerable supporting water supplies. Unlike many mills on the upper water of small rivers, which in the Summer months often only had enough water to work a few hours a day, the Hempstead Mill worked a regular twelve hour shift, its water supply being topped up at the main mill pond by releases from Selbrigg Pond, the upper mill pond (until it was swept away in 1912), from Horsepit Pond and occasionally from the Small Decoy. This arrangement meant that the miller had to walk or ride to operate the sluices of these other ponds at regular intervals. The roadway past Hawksmere, turning up hill to Horsepit Pond and the Red_House, leading on to Selbrigg, would have been built for this purpose.

Other mills were operated by the miller and his family alone. 'Why were there a pair of cottages as well? The occupiers of the Mill Cottages in the thirties worked both in the mill and on Mill_Farm. But before that the answer may lie in the very large sand and gravel pits which existed on the east side. Mr Hunt, the owner since a 1982, has dug up a variety of gravel-working equipment showing this was a major pit. Would it not, when worked by the Gurney estate, have required the presence of two cottages alongside to house its workers? The gravel pit existed by 1841.

In 1965, when the executors of Mr George Knight sold much of his Hempstead property, they were in something of a predicament as to how best to maximise their returns in regard to Mill_Farm Hempstead which was a tenanted farming property with, presumably, no chance of vacant possession and yet every likelihood of involving expense to the Landlord in the maintenance of the Mill. Mr George Knight's executors were in the course of selling Green_Farm to the Harmer family, who had expressed interest in all the adjoining land also being offered for sale.

Once I had learnt to ride my bike Hempstead mill was a popular destination from school.  When I arrived at boarding school aged 10 I couldn't ride a bike; all my friends pedalled off on a Sunday afternoon and left me behind to stew at school. It became a top priority to learn how not to fall off.  Once or twice I ran all the way to the Holt Lowes, arriving long after my peers, and exhausted to boot; I never got as far as Hempstead mill, which was even further away along the Hempstead Road.

When the wheel was removed and the turbine installed, the pitwheel was also taken out as the turbine provided drive in the same plane as the upright shaft. Although redundant, the wallower was left on the upright shaft. The turbine then drove the spur wheel directly by means of a cast iron gear.

The mill machinery is now incapable of operating as one corner of the shaft support beam has sunk, preventing the turbine from disengaging.

W.H. Auden used to stay in the house next to the mill and would often visit the mill.

The millpond originally came right up to the back of the mill and the above photograph clearly shows the filled in area. The River Glaven originally ran to the left of the mill until the mill was built and the millpond was dug.
The Glaven was then diverted into a specially dug cut to drain the new mill's outflow. The change was enacted to accomodate the mill machinery as the wheel needed to be on the right hand side in order for the gears to run in the correct direction.

The Newell family rented the mill house (the east section of the mill building) to Walter Platford and his wife Dot, from c.1946 to c.1960, after which, Walter moved to Stalham.
Walter’s parents, Mark and Bessie Platford, lived next door, in the end cottage on the south eastern side of what is now Hawksmere. They were there from c.1946 to c.1958, when Bessie moved in with one of her daughters in Baconsthorpe due to illness.

Walter Platford's brother Cyril, as a teenager, also lived at the cottage on the Hawksmere site.

The dotted old boundary line clearly shows the original course of the River Glaven before it was diverted to the northwest in order to accommodate the mill.

c.1810: Mill built and Selbrigg Pond dug by hand to provide a water supply from the River Glaven

Bryant's map 1826: New Mill

White's 1836: Isaac Everitt, corn miller residing Hempstead (possibly miller at Hempstead postmill)

Tithe map 1837: Owned by Richard Hanbury Gurney, Daniel Jex, miller

Tithe map 10th Sept 1839: Watermill, Occupier: William Dawson - also Hempstead postmill

1839: Daniel Jex, miller

1872: Frederick W. Harris, miller

Post Office Directory 1875: F.W. Harris

Kelly's 1879: Frederick William Harris, miller, Hempstead Water mill

White's 1883: Frederick William Harris, miller

Kelly's 1892: George Bird (tenant to the Gurney family) also at Holt towermill, Fairstead Road, Holt

Kellys 1896: George Bird (tenant to the Gurney family) also at Holt towermill, Fairstead Road, Holt

Kellys 1900: George Bird (tenant to the Gurney family)

Kelly's 1904: James Tuck, miller

Census 1901: James Tuck, millers manager

1907: John Tuck - last miller to grind flour for bread made on the premises and also coal merchant

Census 1911: James Tuck, miller, corn and coal merchant

c.1911 - 1912: Thomas John Preston - gave up shortly after the 1912 flood that swept away the upper pond

1912: Newell Bros took over - Donald, Frank & William

1917: Newell Bros. trading as W A Newell

Kellys 1922: Newell Bros.

Macdonald's 1930: Newell Bros.

Kellys 1937: Newell Bros.

Macdonald's 1939: Newell Bros.

1945: George Knights bought much of Hempstead, including the the mill from the Gurney family

1925-1953: John Clarke, mill worker and then master baker until closure

c.1946-c.1960: Walter Platford rented the mill house from the Newell family and lived there with wife Dot

1953: Baking ceased as Sunblest Bread started a delivery round

1960s: All milling ceased, with animal feed being the final commodity produced

1970s: The turbine powered circular saw was still running as late as 1977

12th July 1984: An RAF Tornado collided with a Jaguar in mid air and the Tornado came down behind the mill

2004: Mill occupied by Pat Newell, son of Frank Newell

6th November 2014: Pat Newell died aged 76

March 2015: Mill buildings fenced off from the road after a break in

June 2015: Further intrusion into the mill with photographs being published online

July 2015: Police engaged in tracing intruders

April 2016: Grade ll Mill complex advertised for sale by Savills for c.£500,000

2018: Mill house undergoing renovation

2021: Site becoming derelict, renovation having ceased, after the death of the owner

July 2023: Mill advertised as sold subject to contract with a guide price of £500,000

1st October 2023: Millpool subjected to flooding after worst rain storm since August 1912

October 2023: Mill advertised for sale by Brown & Co with a guide price of £500,000 - brochure

October 2023: Building degrading with displaced tiles and severe roof leaks, interior held up with Acrow props