Devon
The history of a Devon mill house
Team Selgars · · 1 min read
Mills were infrastructure
A working mill was the industrial centre of its area — the place the whole valley brought its grain. That is why they sit where they sit: on the water, at a crossing, with a track that everyone used. It explains a lot about the layout of the buildings around them.
Living in one
Thick walls, small windows, floors that are not level and were never going to be. Heat behaves strangely. Sound travels through the structure rather than the air, so you hear someone two rooms away and not the person next door.
The water is still the point
Everything about the site is organised around the leat and the river. Understanding where the water was made to go is understanding why the buildings are where they are, and it is the first thing we had to learn.
Repair rather than restoration
Old buildings want breathable materials and patience. Modern fixes trap moisture and cause damage that shows up five years later. Most of what we do here is undoing something well-intentioned from the 1970s.