Cobham Mill

I spotted an advert for an open day, with the lure of home-made teas and cakes, at Cobham Mill on the River Mole.  It's only open once a month during the summer and wasn't somewhere I'd been before, other than  a fleeting view when passing through Cobham on the way to work many years ago to avoid the M25 traffic.

The site of the mill was possibly one of 3 mills mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, though this one was built in 1799 after the previous mill was washed away by a storm. The building you see today was actually an annex to the main mill which was demolished in 1953,  along with a row of cottages, to widen the main road to Leatherhead originally plagued with traffic major bottlenecks due to being restricted to a single carriageway round the mill. After a chequered history the Cobham Mill Preservation Trust started restoration of the grade II building in 1990, milling flour again in 1992 for the first time since 1928. The open days started in 1993.

All in all, a pleasant and interesting Sunday afternoon excursion and even better the threatened rain held off (the cake was good too!).