History of Brignall Mill, Barnard Castle
There is a reference to a Mill in 1758 - one John White
gave £120 for a thousand year lease for Brignall Mill,
to the Strathmore Estate. This may be our mill, but there
were four mills in Brignall in 1712, so it is uncertain.
The Todd family crop up regularly in the
Brignall Mill story. They were numerous locally and their
family tree is impressive. They seem to have come from Cumberland
originally. In 1756 it is recorded that William Todd and
his brothers brought into cultivation 15 acres of rugged
waste on his Father’s farm at Brignall Banks which
probably refers to Moorhouse Farm which is the immediate
neighbour of the Mill. This might have included the Mill
fields? William later paid a rental of £54 at Brignall
and was a churchwarden in 1772.
The Mill now has about 6 acres of land including the big
flat field east of the house bordering the Greta. This land
is clearly shown as clear and belonging to the Mill in 1840
but at that time the Mill also owned two fields at the top
of the Bank which are now part of Moorhouse Farm. The main
source of income probably came from milling but the inhabitants
would have kept stock and farmed as well. The Rokeby
Field Books record the property as Brignall
Mill Farm. Old boundary stones are clearly visible
between the big flat field and the river and I think these
would have marked the boundary between the Rokeby Estate
and its neighbour.
In 1840 Thomas Ainsley was resident at Brignall Mill and
for many years he paid £50 a year rent for the Mill
and its small farm which consisted of three sizeable fields
and a holme which is the piece of land immediately around
the farmhouse/Mill itself.
There was also a Joseph Todd at Moorhouse and an Anthony
Todd at Brignall Mill who appears, in 1846, to have paid
his tithes to the Church at Brignall but attended the Methodist
Chapel at Scargill across the river…obviously hedging
his bets for redemption there…
There were still Todds at the Mill within living memory
when visitors recall that some of the animals seem to have
occupied the cottage along with their owners. One of the
old plans marks one of the lower rooms as henhouse.
The Todds drove a trap which would have been the standard
mode of transport into Barnard Castle in the early 20 century.
Conditions in the Mill Cottage must have been quite primitive
- the main heating was from a traditional black iron range.
Having spent one winter in the Mill during renovations without
a modern central heating system I can vouch for the hardiness
of our ancestors – it was probably essential to keep
as many animals in the house as possible just to avoid hypothermia.
Now of course the eco-heating has ushered in a new era…
Brignall Mill lies on the very edge of the Rokeby Estate
and was sold to a private individual in the 1970s. The Mill
end was dilapidated and had to be re-built from the first
floor up.
The Mill machinery remains largely in its
original positions. 
The
water driven Mill had a simple undershot wooden wheel interior
to the building and a shaft directly drove one millstone
while two others were driven by a system of huge iron cogged
wheels. Presumably corn was the staple but the upper floor
was used at one time to dry barley and there was some kind
of drying oven. The barley was then used in the making of
beer.
The
corn must have been brought in at the top of the Mill and
then passed down to the grinding floor where the three huge
mill stones ground it into flour.
The sacks of flour would have been transported away on
waggons or in an earlier age, on packhorses. The track which
now ends at the Mill used to go across the Greta by a ford
and on up to Scargill and over the moors to Arkengarthdale
in the Yorkshire Dales. It was an ancient packhorse route.
I have not been able to establish the date beginning the
working life of the Mill except to say that it was probably
working in 1758 and continued to work up until the very
early 20 century when it fell into disuse.
Jane Weston
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