POOLS AND MILLS
| A Bordesley watermill was recorded in the C14th and in 1586. This
was probably Medley's Mill, shown on Tomlinson's map beside the Cole
with no pool, and possibly the 'Boreing Mill' on Beighton's. It may
have begun as the mill of Heybarnes sub-manor: there is no other information
about it, and the site was clear by 1833. Between 1707 and 1768 a
mill built for wire-drawing but converted in 1732 for blade-grinding,
stood on the Rea near Duddeston Bridge. Most of the pools in Bordesley,
made for stock-watering and fish, were quite small: the largest, about
three acres in area, occupied the site of the original Birmingham
Small Arms Works building. One of Birmingham's manorial mills stood
on the Rea just to the north of the present junction of Montagu Street
and Belmont Passage: this was Heath Mill, built as far down-stream
as possible from Deritend ford, so that ponding of Rea behind the
milldam would not raise the level at the ford too high. Bordesley
Brook also fed the pool, and to take off excess water a floodgate
and long channel were made in Little Park, bypassing the mill on the
Birmingham side.
The needs of mill and ford were often in conflict: enough water for the mill meant that the ford was too deep, while a shallow crossing caused idle wheels. In Tudor times Birmingham's mills were often unable through lack of water to grind all the town's requirements of corn, to the profit of Duddeston and Saltley mills down-Rea. In 1673 John Cooper who had rebuilt Heath Mill was accused of making the dam so high that wains (wagons) could not use the ford. Then or later the Coopers, who held the tenancy for 1½ centuries, used two undershot wheels, the second overlapping the first, to extract all possible power from the water. The wheels, the dormered mill and the Coopers' large farmhouse on the Deritend bank, are clearly shown on Westley's Prospect. Thereon is found also 'The Old Mill House' (north of Gibb Street/Heath Mill Lane corner). This is a puzzle, for it is most unlikely that there was ever a watermill so close to the ford, and it is some distance from the Heath Mill site: the name may however refer to the dwelling of the miller at the nearby tower windmill (Allcock Street). This (shown on Buck's Prospect) had been built or rebuilt by the Coopers some decades before 1750. A triangular pool was later made for Coopers' Watermill on the Little Park side. It was then blade-grinding, but in its last years it reverted to grist-milling. River works removed pool and mill in 1852. |
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