Key

K: = Interviewer, Kate
DR: = Interviewee, David Robertson
[time e.g. 5:22] = inaudible word at this time
[5:22 IA] = inaudible section at this time
[word] = best guess at word
… = interruption in sentence, trailing off or short pause

DR: Back in 2017 I asked the National Trust if I could volunteer as a welcome person. And when I was having my interview the then Ops Manager said, ‘How do you fancy becoming a miller?’ So I said, ‘Yes, sounds different.’ I didn’t want to do gardening and everything, I wasn’t into the then rangers’ work, the estate workers as they were at the time. So I said, ‘Yes, I’ll have a go.’ So the following Saturday I went down to see Richard, who was the then miller, senior miller. Quite enjoyed it, including working with my hands and everything. But watching them mill and then over the subsequent month I learnt to mill, I became a trained miller. Learnt how the water comes down from the main weir, up behind the house, along the leat and the problems we have with the leat of cleaning it out because of the build-up of leaves and silt over the year, particularly during the autumn with the leaf fall. So by the spring when we’re starting to mill again, the leaves have built up. We have teams come along and dredge it, if you like. It has to be done by hand, we can’t get a digger in or anything like that, and National Trust help with that, arrange for trainee rangers and they’ve got a group of volunteers that go round, like a hit squad going round different estates to do particular jobs.
And, of course, I learnt before you actually mill you have to learn the operation of the mill and how it’s operated by the water and how you turn the water on and off. There’s a lever called a dump valve, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. You have to make sure the weir is letting water into the leat then the water comes down the leat into another gate valve by the mill which lets the water run along the launder which is the wooden framework you’ll see outside which then tips on to the wheel itself. I think I’ve mentioned before about the fact that we’ve got an abstraction licence, not an extraction licence, for the water because the water goes straight through; once it’s past the wheel it goes straight back into the river so we’re not extracting the water which makes it a lot cheaper for the National Trust.
So I did that until COVID which was March ’20, ’21? ’20.

K: ’20.

DR: March ’20. And of course everything shut down. And then we formed the Acorn Bank Watermill Trust because they were going to mothball the mill. I became the Secretary of that as well as being a miller. We’ve expanded quite a bit since then, now the mill has developed quite a lot. As well as the mill, before COVID I became an industrial heritage guide which involved walking people around the estate. Basically it started off as a 45-minute tour, start in the shepherd’s hut, going down to the bird hide and the quarries, the original quarries for the gypsum mining, then back up past the Dalston Oak down to the new drift mines ,which is where they started going underground a bit more, and then down to the engine shed. But it expanded quite rapidly, first it took longer than 45 minutes because people were interested and, secondly, I perhaps foolishly offered to take people down the mill as well. And most people, I only had two or three refusals through all the weeks and months I did it.
So that added another hour and, of course, everyone wanted to walk the woodland way down by the river, the Crundle, or Crowdundle. I’ll mention that as well because on industrial heritage tours I still call it Crowdundle, most people do, but some locals will pick you up on it and say it’s the Crundle. But I still call it the Crowdundle and most of the millers call it the Crowdundle. There is one local Cumbrian who insists it’s the Crundle but we all call it the Crowdundle. As far as I know the National Trust staff all call it the Crowdundle as well, so we’ll stick with that.
Of course, the beauty of going down by the river is hopefully you’ll see wildlife. Otters if you’re really lucky, I’ve seen them three or four times since I’ve been here. Kingfisher once, only once. But you see a lot of dippers, particularly down by the mill, just past the mill if you look left or if you’re standing by the waterwheel, there’s a lot of stones down there and the dippers are there and nest. A lot of fish as well. There’s a big pond-like effect by the mill where it’s a bit dappled with the trees overhanging in it and it provides a bit of shade but you can see, it’s quite clear as a result of that and you’ll see the fish swimming round. And that’s where I’ve seen the otters a couple of times because of the fish, they grab the fish. I’ve actually seen otters, two otters with two pups, cubs, I never know which it is, which was very lucky. I was just showing a couple of friends round on a personal tour, a private tour, and my friend happened to see them and she said, ‘Oh, what are they?’ They shot off, of course, but we know they’re still there all the time because where the millrace… the water comes out of the end of the millrace back into the river the silt is left and you see the pawprints quite often so we know they’re there all the time.

K: You said that the water is clear around the mill, is the river generally unpolluted? Do you find there’s not much debris?

DR: I think the river’s very clear, yes. We were at Windermere the other week, for example, and that’s just filthy and Ullswater’s not too clear. But the River Eden, where it runs through Kirkby Thore, that’s brown. I know it’s fast-flowing at the moment but the Crowdundle is quite fast-flowing at times, particularly at this time of year, and it’s clear. It’s not as polluted. I mean, Eden and its tributaries are all part of the SSSI and Special Area of Conservation and everything so it is protected a bit more. But the Crowdundle, of course, isn’t as deep either, the River Eden is quite deep in places, even where it’s thin and running through Kirkby Thore. But the Crowdundle, even full flow, isn’t that deep and certainly by the mill, that millpond area, I don’t know how deep it is, probably six or seven feet deep, but there’s certain bits of the river where you see round, you could almost ford across it if it wasn’t in flow. I wouldn’t like to do it at this time of year where the water’s running fast.
But of course there’s one particular bit down from the main weir, if you’re coming back down towards the mill, where the old weir was. We think it could possibly be a mediaeval one, goes back that far. The current mill’s Victorian but we know Knights Templar time had mills and there’s been mills on site ever since. We don’t know for certain where the original ones were. And of course there would be a lot more mills on the river. There were about 600 in Cumbria, I think, in total along all the different… because of all the waterways. And you’ve got Millbridge Farm, the farm just the other side of Acorn Bank as you go towards Penrith. So there’s a fair chance that the original mill might have been there as well. And there are signs of other weirs as well to slow the water and divert it.

K: Tell me about the storms that you’ve seen or the weather that’s affected the flow of the river.

DR: Yes, well that’s quite important from a mill perspective as well because we have to shut the mill down if the water gets too fast because it comes down the leat to damage the wheel. But our main interest, if you like, in the storms is the weir because the weir’s damaged. And if you go down to the weir, particularly when the water’s flowing off the hills, and you’ll see a white froth and that’s because the water is underneath the apron which is wearing away – the lip, if you like, of the front of the weir – and it’s just digging away underneath. So we’ve got a project, the Riverlands Project, which is a big team. It’s a multiagency team – Environment Agency, Natural England, Eden Rivers Trust, Environment Agency of course, and the National Trust, and they’re all working together to come up with a solution and I think their idea is to start repairs next year which is going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.
So storms are worrying because the first thing we do… I suspect this morning, Tuesday being our maintenance day, they’ll have been up there looking to see if the weir’s still there. If you go down to the weir you’ll see there’s a tree on the other side from where our gate is, the gate valve and everything, and that’s a bit isolated now. Whereas when I first started coming it was part of the land on the other side and the water, where the apron is and is turning round, has churned the bank away so it’s cut right in and that tree is getting more and more isolated. One of the problems is if that tree goes it’ll wash away the whole of that side of the bank and the tenant farmers on the other side won’t be pleased because their land will be flooded. And it will change the direction of the river. Some people say that the river will just go back where it probably was originally and that’s part of the issue.

K: And will it then flow away from the mill or will there still be flow?

DR: Yes, it probably will. It will come back round at some point but, yes. It’ll certainly mean that our leat, which is fed directly on the bend just before the weir, would be cut off, yes. That would be a disaster and that’s our main concern. But, of course, 2017 the weir was made listed, grade II*. When they relisted the mill because of the work they’ve done on it they listed the weir as well. So that’s why it has to be repaired, they can’t let it go. I suspect there would have been people that would say if it wasn’t listed, if it breaks and goes it goes. But now they’ve got to repair it now and because the mill is grade II* listed as well it’s important that’s preserved and we’re able to use it. So there’s a lot of effort gone into that.
The mill, we’ve made a lot of changes and improvements to it as well and we have a lot of school parties come. And they do projects associated with the river as well and the birds. And if they come at the right time of year they’ll see the swallows. We have lots of swallows nesting. We have blue tits, redstarts, except they didn’t come this year. But they all nest in the mill and around the mill buildings.

K: Did you say the swallows were nesting inside?

DR: Oh, they’re inside, yes. It makes a right mess. In the kiln room particularly we have to jetwash the kiln, I don’t know whether they’ve done it this year yet but it will be done before the new season starts. So the swallows come April, May, they were late leaving this time, they had two lots of fledglings some of them. But they make such a mess in the kiln room. But they’re also in the bank barn, they nest in there. They nest in the cart shed, we’ve had a couple of nests, and what was the log store next to the kiln room on the lower floor, we’ve had a nest in there this year. So they seem to be spreading out a bit. We haven’t had any swifts for a few years, we used to have swifts nesting in the top of the bank barn, I’ve not seen them for three or four years unfortunately. But the swallows seem to be getting more. We’ve had blackbirds nesting in one of the stable blocks under the bank barn, which was quite nice and, interestingly, we use that for storage, we’re always in and out of it. The blackbirds just carried on and produced some babies, which was quite nice.
We also have the squirrels, of course, red squirrels. We don’t see man of them but we do feed them. We’ve got feeders up and the food goes so they are around. I am told that some of the feeders we’ve got the grey squirrels can’t get in, I think to do with size, I’m not sure.

K: I was going to say, do you see greys as well? [14:00 IA]

DR: No, we don’t see them, I’ve not seen any greys either.

K: Good.

DR: But you may know that the red squirrel ranger is regularly round the estate and we’ve got the numbers. So if we see a grey squirrel we have to ring him up and tell him. We still get mice but the mill’s all sealed so there’s no chance of vermin getting in any of the equipment or getting the flour. They’re all in proper flour, aluminium-lined, vented bins so they can’t get in. But you’ll see little voles trotting around and little mice occasionally which, when we get visitors, most visitors think it’s cute. We have to reassure them that they’re nowhere near the flour but the kids particularly love it when they see a little mouse trotting around, except they chase it of course. And the dogs go wild. It takes about an hour to clean up after we’ve been milling because we have to clean up all flour dust and everything because the mice will come and eat that as well. We’d rather not have them in the mill at all.

K: Can I just take you back to the conversation about the mines?

DR: Yeah.

K: The mines are near the river, aren’t they?

DR: Yes.

K: Was there always an issue with water ingress and…?

DR: Yes, the original quarries, if you go down to them, are full of water, not very nice water, it’s covered in algae and all sorts.

K: Is it completely stagnant?

DR: It is mostly, particularly the summer it smells as well, but yes. We don’t know how deep it is, nobody has ever ventured down but it looks quite deep. And of course that was one of the problems – when they were mining the gypsum, and that’s where the quarries, they had two quarries next to each other, they started. And then they built adits in because they realised the gypsum was going into the hillside, it was going level.

K: Just tell me, what is an adit?

DR: An adit’s an entrance.

K: Oh, so they were tunnelling horizontally?

DR: Yes. It’s a mining term, it’s an entrance. So they were building these going straight in but one of the problems they had was water and that’s why eventually they opened up the new drift mines as well, over the other side of the estate which was straight into the ground, there was no quarries or anything there, they just went straight into the hillside. Talking about hillside, it doesn’t look like, when you’re walking around the estate, it’s a hillside but there is. And if you walk from the new drift mine path by the gunpowder store across the field, you’ll see the reed beds where the mine is sinking. And we have had… what do you call the hole where it drops down?

K: Sinkhole. Sinkhole.

DR: Sinkhole. There was a sinkhole on the field, in the field by the farmer on the way down to the engine shed. But basically the water’s still rushing through the mine and it washes it away. Now, the National Trust used to have people check their land regularly to see if it’s dropping, I imagine they still do every years, it would be silly not to. But the reed beds that you can see are not dropping any lower, it’s just where it’s slightly… Because basically it’s pillar and stall, so the mine goes in and they dig out gypsum but leave pillars. So there’s about 40% gypsum still under the ground. In the coal mining industry what they used to do was come backwards pulling the pillars down, dangerous, but they didn’t do that in gypsum mining.

K: So theoretically there’s no subsidence, but you think it is sinking?

DR: Well it will be sinking, yes.

K: Is gypsum soluble then?

DR: Yes, because it’s…

K: When the water rushes through it?

DR: Yes, that’s how they make the gypsum, they put it with hot water . But, of course, there’s a strata across the top of clay and other things, quartz and everything, so that’s the roof if you like and then you’ve got the earth on top. It’s just between some of the pillars it is starting to sink but it’s been like that for years and years. The mine shut in the 1930s and there’s only been one sinkhole that I’m aware of and that was the one across from the farm.

K: But you think the water from the river is still [18:20] through?

DR: Oh there’s still water, there’s still water. If you were to go down into the… if you were to open up one of the drift mines, like the new drift mine entrance where the railway track goes down, open it up and go down, I think you’ll find it’s just full of water.

K: Does that affect the flow of the river, do you think?

DR: Well, the water must be taking away from the river, yes, I would have thought. It’s got to go somewhere so I imagine, yes, if some of the water’s going under the ground. But, there again, it’ll be rejoining the river because if you think where the mines are, it’ll be going back into the Crowdundle later on. Or if it’s drifting right down to where Birk Sike and Temple Sowerby is, it’ll be going down back into the water system through that way anyway. So it might be taking water from the Crowdundle where it comes from the Culgaith direction, as it goes under but…

K: It ends up back in the Eden.

DR: It’ll end up back… yes, and then it’s the water table, isn’t it? It’ll be all connected somewhere or other.

K: So is there much wildlife down at the end where the quarries are? Do you ever see anything?

DR: The quarries round by the bird hide lots of birds. Rabbits we see. In the quarries in round about May time of course there’s the buzzards; there’s been a couple of pairs of buzzards nesting. That can be dangerous because if you get too close they divebomb you when you’re walking around. We’ve had… I think it was a wren nesting last year in the actual bird hide. We still get nuthatches and treecreepers up by the mill as well but you don’t see them quite as often round by the quarry area. I suspect a lot of it is because of the insects coming off that horrible water .

K: Do many people go down to the…?

DR: Most people I take, or took, on tours, they didn’t know anything about that bit of Acorn Bank. Similarly, the bit down to the engine shed. That path, to be fair, was only put there for the industrial heritage tours, it was built by the estate workers. But still a lot of people don’t go down there.

K: So apart from the people on your tours, are you aware that… are there people you’ve met, round the mill for example, we’ve got stories of the river or memories of the mill before it was ever renovated?

DR: Yes, we have a lot of people that come along are locals and tell us stories about… usually the mill because that’s where… But, of course, a lot of people remember this building when it was the care home, the Sue Ryder home. There’s one of our members at the mill was part of the choir that used to come up and sing at Christmas in the house here for the residents. But we get lots of stories. I mean, we’ve had a relative of the owners, of the then owners of the mine, who lived in the cottage of course.

K: Do you know their name?

DR: I’m trying to think. Oh, it’s gone.

K: Don’t worry, carry on. Maybe you will.

DR: Oh dear, I did [21:34], it’s gone out of my mind. Boazman, of course. Boazman. So Ken Boazman was the last of the mine owners, if you like. And of course the mine was taken over by various companies and eventually British Gypsum. But Ken Boazman was a descendent of the Boazmans and he managed it, was General Manager, and he became Honorary President and all that sort of thing of the various companies, Carlisle Cement Company and people like that, a plasterboard company. And he and his family lived in the mill cottage and two of the residents, his daughter and her partner, and they left us money at the mill to develop the mill which is why we’re putting the second wheel in courtesy of that, and a lot of the other improvements made. But one of their relatives, and I can’t remember his name, he wasn’t called Boazman but he was related to them, he came from Canada and stayed in one of the cottages, holiday lets, here. And he didn’t tell me until after the tour was over. He was saying he'd learnt a lot about his family he didn’t know about. And of course I was able to show him documentation and everything which was quite interesting. Because Nancy Thompson and Barbara Boazman, the mill was their playground, if you like, and the river.

K: When they were young?

DR: When they were young. And round the back of the mill, we discovered when we were clearing it all out because we’re cobbling it at the moment, it’s nearly done. We’re going to make it into a picnic area around the back of the wheelhouse. We discovered a landing stage, a properly built, constructed, landing stage for a boat. But we can’t think of any reason why it would have been used for the mill. I mean, we're talking about the river, how deep it is, it wouldn’t have been deep enough to carry boats of the size to be…

K: To carry grain.

DR: To carry flour or grain, certainly not grain. So one of the theories is it was built for a little rowing boat or something for the family to use. We don’t know for certain. But we’ve just rebuilt it, actually, because it was starting to crumble but it was an old construction and the millers have rebuilt it. Talking of which, of course we rebuilt the viewing platform, which is very popular with the public. It’s in a beautiful position to see the river and the mill and everything and a lot of people stop there. It’s particularly popular with older people who want to sit down as they’re walking round. It’s also the health and safety thing actually, it’s the turning point for the Tramper which can’t go through the woodland. So they’ve got a nice wide turning circle now to turn that around. But it does mean people can see a bit of the river which is quite nice.
The only other thing I can think of about the connection with the river, going back to industrial heritage tours, was the gunpowder store. Cumbria was once the centre for gunpowder manufacture and the reason for that was the rivers, the water, and also beech and alder.

K: The rivers for transport or the rivers for water?

DR: Mills, mills. The mills for making the gunpowder. Some of them would be for transporting, like Milnthorpe where the sulphur came in. But one of the three constituents is charcoal and alder and birch are supposed to be the best for making charcoal and they also like water. So the mill next to the water with suitable trees. So Acorn Bank has got a lot of beech particularly, and some alder but there’s a lot of beech trees around. But it’s Sizergh, Sedgewick actually, but it’s on part of the Sizergh estate, was the mill that produced the gunpowder that they used at this particular site, the gypsum site. And they supplied quite a few of the gypsum mines around.

K: So the gunpowder store was where it was delivered?

DR: It was delivered to, yes.

K: And stored by the mines.

DR: Yes, by the mines but far enough away from the mines not to… if it went boom.

DR: So that’s another connection with the river and the mills. And at Sedgewick you can still see the remains of the buildings.

K: It’s good they’re in partnership over the weir, isn’t it? They can iron things out.

DR: Well, it’s very impressive and that’s down to the general manager and the project manager who have pulled it all together and got them all working together. So that all being well they’re starting next May or June. They have to do it when the river’s low and it may impact upon the mill, of course, although the work is just past the mill. So hopefully where they start… I think they have to do it in two halves but I think they might leave a trickle coming through the back, I hope . I don’t know, we’ll have to see about that.