asakiyume | Entries tagged with mills

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So here is the bright red mill building--Aldrich Mill--which we passed on our way to the dino tracks place last weekend.

Look at its lovely foundations. . .

And the Batchelor Brook, streaming away beside it

The earliest mill on this site was used as a distillery, but this mill was built in 1836 to manufacture woolen goods. The Aldrich family acquired an interest in it in the 1840s, and from 1860 on, it was solely theirs. During the Civil War, it manufactured wool blankets. In 1870, it became a grist mill, and in 1913 a blacksmith shop. (Sources for these facts are here. and here. Mr. Nash told us some of them, but I refreshed my memory by searching online.)

Why did the mill have a bell? Maybe for calling people to work?

In the 1940s, a water wheel was added, but never used. The water wheel isn't on anymore--at least, we couldn't see evidence of it--but here's a picture of what it looked like.

It's still owned by the Aldrich family, according to Mr. Nash.

Behind this grand old mill building is the Mill River, which

teenybuffalo took me to several years ago.

Little Springtime, the healing angel, and I went down to the very spot she had shown me (and, actually, the healing angel was along on that trip too), but really what we wanted to get to was a sandy island a bit upstream. The problem was that there was a waterfall between us and upriver at this point.

The healing angel hopped quite nimbly across the river and signaled to us, after a time, that we would find a place to scramble down on our side if we walked back along the highway a bit.

We walked back up the highway, and sure enough, did find a place to scramble down to the water.

Here is the healing angel, already on the island we want to get to.