WATERMILLS

The first local mill to be recorded was that of Greet. It stood on the Cole, where Stratford Road crosses it. That the road bends to cross the river at that point may well be due to the fact that a milldam held back water and created a shallows below it : there are too many instances hereabout and elsewhere for the presence together of a watermill and road crossing (e.g. Lady Mill, Yardley Wood Road : Colebrook Priory, Priory Road) to be a coincidence. Roger Fulford tried to cross by Greet Mill in 1275 when the river was in flood, and got himself and the mill into history by drowning there - the first of many recorded men and beasts so to die. A natural break of slope at that point created a fall which a weir increased to provide power for a wheel or wheels.

Greethurst Mill is referred to in 1497 (but first record may be long after foundation). This was probably the mill known as Coldbath or Lady Mill, the latter being the name to survive longest. It stood beside the brook, and in its later years, probably after rebuilding it was separated from its pool by Stoney Lane (Yardley Wood Road), which lay along its dam.

Sarehole (Sare-holm, holm meaning flood-meadow) Mill is first certainly recorded in 1542, but that may have been a rebuilding as a pool already existed there and it was said that annual payments had been made to Maxstoke Priory before the Dissolution. These mills all ground corn : conversions for industrial grinding came later.

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