Willey Mill in Farnham Surrey has been our company Headquarters and training centre for the last nine years. Whilst convenient for the M3 via the A331 and A31, the house, which stradles the River Wey, stands on the edge of the countryside.

Willey Mill House stands on land owned since before Domesday by the Bishops of Winchester, lords of the manor of Farnham from the earliest records until the manorial rights lapsed in modern times. The name ‘Willey’ is very interesting. It may have derived from the name of the Wuley family, who owned the tenancy of the mill in the 14th century. It is more likely however that the Wuley family took their name from this place, as did a later tenant Thomas de Weyle. Other sources speculate that, although Willey Mill stands upon the river Wey, the name is derived from the name of the river Wiley, which flows from Wilton to Salisbury, and from which both the county of Wiltshire and indeed the river Wey take their names. ‘Farnham’ comes from ‘Fern-ham’, directly named after the ferns growing on its neighbouring heaths, and is amusingly described by the historian Gough Camden in his ‘Britannia’ as ‘being surrounded by dreary heaths covered in sand and fern.’ Camden goes on to say that Ethelbald, king of Wessex, gave Farnham to the Bishops of Winchester – the earliest mention of the town. He also describes Farnham as the place where King Alfred, king of the West Saxons, fought against the Danes and wounded their king, who fled and his followers forced back into Essex.

At the time of the Great Survey in 1086 there were six mills in Farnham, each valued at 46s 4d, producing a substantial total yearly income for the bishops of £139. Willey Mill is almost certainly one of these six Domesday mills. The A31 Alton Road nearby is believed to be one of the oldest trading routes in England, called the North Downs Way, or Harroway. In pre-historic times this route connected the English Channel and the chalk heartlands of Wessex. In later years it became part of the Pilgrims Way. It is therefore unsurprising that the site of Willey Mill, close to this trading route and on a favourable part of the river Wey, is an ancient one. Rudyard Kipling might have had Willey Mill in mind when he wrote so evocatively:

See you our little mill that clacks So busy by the brook? She has ground her corn and paid her tax Ever since Domesday Book

There have been at least three mills upon this site. We know for certain that Willey Mill was rebuilt in 1370 on the site of a previous, dilapidated mill. There are very few records between the 15th and 18th centuries, but we know that a mill existed here in the 17th century and appears on maps, clearly marked ‘Willey Mill’. It is likely that the 14th century mill continued here, gradually falling into disrepair until approximately the middle of the 18th century when it was rebuilt once again, becoming the building we see today.

Although the present Willey Mill is essentially of the 18th century, it is possible that somewhere deep in the foundations, there are traces of both the original Saxon mill and the 14th century mill built on the same site. The present building is of brick and local stone, probably quarried at Crondall. The great waterwheel, removed in the 1960s, was of cast-iron, installed in the mid-19th century. There were once three pairs of millstones, imported from the Derbyshire Peak District.

So who were the tenants of Willey Mill? The earliest record shows that in 1302-1303 Celia de Wuley transferred her tenancy of Willey Mill to her son Richard de Wulley. He in turn paid 31 shillings for possession to the Bishop of Winchester for ‘the mill and 3 acres’. Three years later Wuley added a further three acres to his holding. The amount of land attached to Willey mill has varied only slightly over the last seven hundred years, being only nine acres in 1996.

In 1370 the bishop’s rent rolls record payment from John Wolfrich, bondman of the lord of Farnham, ‘for a toft and adjoining croft, where a mill was formerly situated, called ‘Welegh’ which William de Wykeham, now the Bishop of Winchester acquired and granted to the said John on condition he should build a blifer mill at his own expense …’ A blifer mill was of horizontal stones supported by a bail on an iron spindle.

Wolfrich clearly completed his obligation to rebuild Willey Mill, for the following year a ten-year lease was granted to him, from 1371 to 1381, at a yearly rent of £3/14/3d, for the term of his life. Records show Wolfrich paid this rent until at least 1379.

The Black Death swept through Farnham in the 1380s, decimating the population and destroying prosperous businesses. Willey Mill fell empty, through lack of available tenants. In 1381 the bishop’s rent rolls record that a fine was issued for default of rent of ‘Whelye mill, 3 crofts and moor of free land adjoining, formerly belonging to John Wolfriche, in default of tenants, by reason of pestilence’.

A new tenant was found in 1384, one Thomas de Welye, who had taken the name of this place as his own. He paid 20s/11d for Welye mill and 3 crofts. The reduced rent was a reflection of the difficulty of finding able tenants, as a third of England’s population was dying. By 1388 Thomas was paying £2/-/11d.

There are no more surviving leases to give us names of tenants until the 18th century. However, we know that the mill continued here, as it is marked both on Ogilby’s map of 1675, and on the earliest large scale map of Surrey, that of John Senex, drawn in 1729. Willey Mill probably continued to grind its corn quietly, century after century, undisturbed, presenting an idyllic rural picture. William Cobbett, who was born in Farnham in 1763, wrote in his Rural Rides that this stretch of valley between Alton and Farnham was ‘the finest ten miles in England’.

In 1766 the Bishop of Winchester issued a new lease of Willey Mill to John Matchwick and his trustees Thomas Matchwick of Guildford and William Moon of Tilford.

John Matchwick died in 1776 still in possession of Willey Mill. His trustees were granted a new lease of Willey Mill, together with leases of Bourne Mill and Bourne Malt Mill. The Bishop of Winchester reserved the valuable fishing rights. The Matchwick trustees, who included in 1786 John Mainwaring, and in 1790 a Doctor Butler, retained the lease until well into the 19th century.

As we move through the 18th century it became common for lords of the manor, who were frequently remote figures, to grant leases to tenants keen on building up investments in property and businesses. These tenants became in effect the local landowners who in turn installed sub-tenants. Although the overall owner of Willey Mill remained the Bishop of Winchester, the land tax returns record a variety of short-term ‘owners’, or chief tenants. These record the Bishop of Hereford as owner under the bishops of Winchester in 1809, and in 1818 the ‘owner’ was Lord Lothian. In 1827 the ‘owners’ were the trustees of Lord Charles Keir. These landowners were the first of a new breed of investors in England, putting their money, through brokers, into anything that brought a good rental return, frequently without knowing or caring what businesses they held. It was not uncommon, for example, for church-going temperance widows to find they owned breweries or pubs, unknowingly drawing an income from activities they would otherwise have disapproved of.

The sub-tenant miller of Willey Mill in 1786 was Daniel Arundell, who held a lease under the Matchwick trustees from 1786 to 1814. Arundell held a lease not only of Willey Mill, but also of Bourne Mill and Malt Mill. He installed a sub-tenant at Willey Mill, one George Beldham, who as far as we know was the miller who actually lived and worked here.

Daniel Arundell retained his lease of Willey Mill until his death in 1801 when he bequeathed it in his will, along with his leases of Bourne and Malt Mills to Thomas Simmonds. The Simmonds family were probably the longest tenants to be associated with Willey Mill, owning the lease for the next 78 years until 1879. However, the family did not always occupy Willey Mill. In 1801 the miller here was sub-tenant Henry Goodeve, who came from a long line of local millers. The records of Farnham manor court show that in the 18th century Runwick, Dippenhall, and Willey Mills were all occupied at one time or another by the Goodeve family.

In 1841 the Farnham Tithe Award was compiled. This showed William and John Simmonds to be the owners of Willey Mill, which included just 10 acres of land. The Simmonds family also owned Bourn Place including some 30 acres, Bourn Mill with a further 8 acres and Weydon Mill with a further 3 acres. In total the Simmonds family occupied some 61 acres in Farnham.

The first national census of 1841 showed that in that year William Simmonds lived at Willey Mill with his wife Sarah and their five children: William 5, Jane 4, John 3, Amelia 1 and baby George, just one month old. The mill was also home to three female servants and a young agricultural labourer, David Hall, aged 20.

In 1849 Willey Mill was valued by the Bishop of Winchester’s agent Charles Osborn at an annual value of £85, including meads, coppice and cottage. Osborn wrote:

The mill and buildings are very old; the mill is breast shot and has a large supply of water except in the summer when in dry seasons it is short of water. The house adjoins the mill and has been fitted up, but stands low and is not so comfortable as it appears from the outside. The outbuildings are slightly built with wood. The meadow adjoining the mill is good land, but the coppices are a poor clay soil, lying intermixed with Mr. Ward’s property, to whom they are let. There is some oak timber in the woods, nearly sufficient for repairs and which the tenant has always taken, but none is allowed by the lease, nor liberty reserved to enter and cut.

William Simmonds continued to occupy Willey Mill throughout the 1840s and 1850s. His wife Sarah died before 1851, probably in childbirth, having produced a baby a year for five years. William remarried and in 1851 was living here with his second wife Mary Ann, who at 47 was three years older than her husband. When the census was taken children William 15, Amelia 11 and George 9 were still at home. The Simmonds family employed two live-in servants.

By 1861 Willey Mill had passed to another of the Simmonds family. John Simmonds 52 lived here with his wife Jane and his unmarried sister, also called Jane Simmonds. The house employed five servants, including a laundress. The Simmonds had a lodger, George C. Julius, a 56-year-old widower. Born in Bengal, Julius was a non-practising member of the College of Surgeons. He lived here at Willey Mill with his 15-year-old daughter Ella.

In 1871 John Simmonds was still in residence with his wife Jane, his sister Jane Simmonds and his widowed sister-in-law Anne Blunden aged 60. The house employed a cook and a housemaid. Simmonds also gave a home to flour dresser Frederick Knight, 27 and labourer William Pain 18.

John’s wife Jane Simmonds died in 1872 aged 63 and was buried at Farnham cemetery. John Simmonds remained at Willey Mill after his wife’s death until 1878, when he left the property. He remained in Farnham until his death in 1895, aged 86 and was buried at West St. Cemetery, Farnham.

A new lease of Willey Mill was granted in 1878 to William Carr. Carr was not only a miller but also a farmer of some 70 acres, employing 9 men and 1 boy. Born at Bradwell in Berkshire, he was 52 when the census was taken in 1881. He lived here at Willey Mill with his wife Eliza 49 and their three children: Frances 25, Louisa 23 and Henry 17. The Carrs were also sheltering Eliza’s widowed mother Mary Woodward 77 and 7-year-old grandson Ernest Carr.

The 1887 local directories record a Henry Carr as the miller of Willey Mill. However Henry did not live here, for when the census was compiled in 1891 the enumerator found William’s widow Eliza still at home with her daughter Louisa and two grandchildren. Eliza was giving a home to boarder William White, a miller aged 23.

From about 1895 Willey Mill was occupied by Thomas Hall, who remained in residence here until about 1920. The 1901 census records Thomas Hall as ‘miller and farmer’ aged 38, born at Leamington Hastings in Warwickshire. He lived here with his wife Minnie 39, also from Leamingon, and their two children, William 11 and Winifred 5, both born in Farnham. The Halls were entertaining an old friend, Mary Tomkins 65, a retired matron, also from Leamington. The Mill House was also home to a general domestic servant, young Emma Wooderson aged 20, born in Farnham.

In 1914 The Farnham Directory carried a fine advertisement describing Thomas Hall as a ‘miller and forage contractor, selling ‘genuine’ flour’, and as ‘an offals and meal merchant’. From this time until its closure in the 1950s Willey Mill produced not only flour but also animal feed.

Thomas’s wife Minnie Hall died in 1907, aged just 46. Thomas Hall remained at Willey Mill until around 1920. On retiring, he remained in the area and died in Farnham in 1939, aged 77.

After Thomas Hall’s departure, Willey Mill was taken by Mr. W.H. Beile. Mr. Beile was a farmer of some 45 acres and employed a miller and two cowmen. The facilities here in the 1920s were typical of those in the countryside at this date, little having changed for hundreds of year. The toilet was at the bottom of the garden, with a drainage ditch to the river. Water was fetched from a pump which stood at the side of the mill house and was kept in a barrel and froze over in winter. There was no electricity and the house was lit by the mellow light of candles and paraffin lamps.

Mr. Beile employed a cowman and a miller, who lived at Willey Mill Cottages nearby. During the 1920s Beile’s cowman was Mr. Guy, followed by a Mr. Fry. The miller was Edward Finn, who lived at Willey Mill Cottages with his family. In the 1920s Willey Mill was grinding meal, including barley beans and corn, to produce animal feed called grist, for local farmers’ cattle. According to letters written by members of the Finn family the property at this time included various cowsheds with haylofts above them.

Following Mr. Beile, Willey Mill was taken in the 1ate 1920s by Mr. C.H. Barnett. Then from 1938 until 1954 it was occupied by Philip Miles Chetwynd-Stapylton. He arrived from Derbyshire to take over the operation, running a provender mill here producing animal food. Willey Mill closed as a commercial operation in 1953. For the next four years the waterwheel powered a chaff cutter, oat roller and a crushing machine, all used for the production of cattle cake. In July 1952 one ton of wheat was ground through one pair of millstones in eight hours. Apparently had the millstones been in better repair it would have taken only five hours.

Philip Chetwynd-Stapylton retired in 1954. He sold Willey Mill and moved to Odiham where he died in 1965 aged 75. The purchaser of Willey Mill in 1954 was C.W. [Jock] Williams of Willey Park Poultry Farm. A member of Farnham Urban District Council, Jock Williams ran a poultry farm here and operated the mill for about three years, when he sold the business to J. Ellis and Sons, of Headley Mill. Willey Mill closed completely in 1957 and was sold as a smallholding, poultry farm and private residence to Captain James Barrington Gornall, DSO, RN.

As a young officer Captain Gornall had driven passed Willey Mill many times on his journey between his home in Alverstoke and his affairs in London. He had long hoped to one day make the property his home and convert it to a peaceful residence. It is thanks to his efforts that the house retains its beautiful character, for he had the foresight to employ a sympathetic architect, R. Lethleullier Gilbert, to oversee the work. One of the difficult decisions made was to remove the great iron waterwheel. When the river was high, after rainstorms, the opened sluice-hatch released such a torrent that the wheel was in danger of running to destruction. The only other alternative was to close the sluice and flood half the valley.

Like his predecessor Jock Williams, Captain Gornall was a local councillor for Farnham, an office he held from 1951-1960. He continued the intensive poultry farm here until at least 1967.

Captain Gornall sold Willey Mill to Mr. Edward Biddle and his wife Margaret, who were in occupation by 1970. The Biddles ran an antiques business here. In 1975 a fire ravaged Willey Mill. The fire erupted shortly after restoration had been completed on the building’s roof, and work was still in progress on the interior. Within minutes the old wing of the property was an inferno. Firemen saved not only the main residence, but also the Biddle’s Pyrenean Mountain dog, Benjie.

In 1982 The Biddles sold Willey Mill to Monogram Investments Ltd a venture capital company. The ground floor being used as an art gallery and for entertaining and the first floor as offices. There was a housekeeper and her husband in residence in the part of the mill which was adjacent to the road. Whilst Monogram Investments were in ownership of Willey Mill, Prince Michael of Kent visited the Mill in 1983 for lunch after arriving by helicopter at Alton to open Oceanic House, Alton.

In 1984 Monogram Investments sold Willey Mill to Arnold and Denis Brun, who occupied the premises as an antique clocks emporium and trout farm until 1996, when the property was put up for sale, offering ‘a perfect Georgian country house, straight out of Jane Austen’. The property had nine acres of meadow attached and two trout tanks, as well as a smoking-room, gallery and showroom.

In 1996 The Bruns sold Willey Mill to the present occupiers Neil and Jennifer Rush, who run the premises as a training and conference centre. They have commissioned this history to mark their association with this historic Domesday Mill.

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