The millers' tale

Running one of the UK’s last working watermills has been a 25-year labour of love for a couple keen to pass the business to a new generation, as Paula Lester reports

- Paula Lester

WHEN Judith Stephens remarked to an estate agent that her husband might show more interest in buying a holiday home in Devon if there was a watermill for sale, no one was more surprised than she was when the agent replied: ‘I’m just typing up the particulars for one now. If you come back later, I’ll try to arrange a viewing for you.’

Unlikely as it may seem, John Stephens had long harboured a dream of owning and running a working watermill. As a child growing up in Hampshire, Mr Stephens had spent many a happy day watching his mother’s brothers working at the family mill at Headley. However, it wasn’t until he was nearly 50, having spent a lifetime farming 500 acres near Alton in the same county, that he finally realised that ambition.

‘I was fractious and bored that day,’ he confesses. ‘But, as soon as we walked down the footpath past Sidbury Mill and saw the leat, we knew it was the place for us.’

The idea had first been sown by Mrs Stephens. ‘Judith said: “You can’t keep farming forever, you like watermills so why don’t we look for one”,’ he recalls, adding: ‘I’d always wanted a working mill, because there are so few (fewer than 100) left.’

Initially, the couple searched within a 100- mile radius of the farm, but three years later, having seen lots of mills that had lost their water supply or become fish farms, the pair

Where the waterwheel turns: Sidbury Mill saviours Judith and John Stephens had given up hope. That’s why, in May 1995, on an annual visit to Sidmouth, Mrs Stephens suggested buying a holiday home instead.