page_title: Ifield Water Mill
section_title: Reconstruction
hierarchical_section_title: Ifield Water Mill / Reconstruction
caption_attribution_description: English: Ifield Brook, just north of Ifield Mill Pond, Ifield, Crawley, West Sussex, England. This fed Ifield Water Mill (q.v.), which is just behind the camera.
context_page_description: Ifield Water Mill is a 19th-century weatherboarded watermill in the Ifield neighbourhood of Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. Built on the site of an earlier, smaller flour mill, which itself replaced an iron forge—one of many in the Crawley area—it fell into disuse in the 1930s. The local council, which acquired the land for housing development in the 1970s, leased the mill to local enthusiasts, who restored it to working order. The mill and an associated house are listed buildings, and there is also a cottage on the site.
context_section_description: The 1683 building was demolished and the structure which stands today was built in its place.  A decorative stone tablet with the date 1683 and the initials of Thomas Middleton and his wife Mary was salvaged and mounted on the exterior.  (Middleton was the owner at the time of the 1683 rebuilding.)  Thomas Durrant spent £3,500 on construction.  This money came from successful litigation against a group of miners whose actions damaged the water supply to his mill at Merstham and rendered it useless; a similar problem started to affect the Ifield mill soon after it was rebuilt.  The water supply began to fail as the brook's flow became weaker, and in 1848 the mill pond was cut in half by the building of the railway line to Horsham.  This originally crossed it on a bridge, but an embankment soon replaced it.  Also, in 1837, a competing windmill had been built near the centre of the village, and two other millers were recorded in Ifield parish by 1821.  Gradual decline continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; the mill passed through many owners, and even one long-established family of owner-millers, the Hardings, struggled.  A steam engine driven by a waterwheel had been installed, but the engine often had to be worked manually because the water power was so feeble.  The mill was no longer in use by 1927, and it was put up for sale with the adjacent Mill Cottage in 1934.  Described as "a gentleman's residence with a picturesque disused water mill", it was clear that the mill's importance had ebbed away.
caption: Ifield Brook as it flows into the mill pond
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