Bourne to run

The garden at Emmetts Mill, Chobham, Surrey A flat waterside site has been transformed into a garden full of drama with plenty of delightful places to stop and enjoy the view, writes Kathryn Bradley-Hole

- Kathryn Bradley-Hole

MEANDERING streams and rivers form an irregular web, carrying water down and away from the woods and heaths of the Surrey Hills, eventually flowing into the Thames. In days long ago, the banks of those waterways were peppered with many mills, used for a variety of local industries, such as leather dressing, paper production, fulling wool and grinding grain. Some of them even created a far more volatile substance-gunpowder-a commodity much in demand in the warring 18th and 19th centuries, although, occasionally, it had the unfortunate result of exploding the mill during the process of manufacture.

Many of the mills have perished in the past 130 years, but a few still survive, including Emmetts Mill, once used for grinding cereals and now part of an elegant home. Its current owner understands there has been milling on the site since the 1570s, with the present three-storey mill, attached to the south end of the house, having been built in 1701. It is a matter of interest that the mill's splendid, bladed wheel is still intact, although it has long been in retirement.

The stream that powered it, known as the Mill Bourne, cuts through the land along an east/west axis, its lively flow being a wondrous addition to the garden. It also conveniently separates the 3½-acre, wedge-shaped property lengthways, into roughly two halves, like side-by-side blocks of Parmesan cheese, each with a different character. North of the Mill Bourne lies the house and its elongated stretch of designed and cultivated garden, ending in a wood; the south side consists of mixed woodland, including some naturalised rhododendrons and a water meadow, which reliably floods during extended winter rains.