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Leeds Castle Mill and Barbican -- Leeds Castle, Maidstone, Kent, UK
N 51° 14.901 E 000° 37.720
31U E 334504 N 5680114
All that is left of the Leeds Castle Mill, built around 1100 as part of the Barbican, is the mill race and slots for the waterwheel
Waymark Code: WMT53D
Location: South East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/27/2016
Views: 0
The waymark coordinates are for the paved path the leads into the Barbican and Mill at Leeds Castle.
We could find very little documentation of this mill on line, except for what we found on Wikipedia: (
visit link)
"RIVER LEN
The River Len is a river in Kent, England. It rises at a spring in Bluebell Woods to the south-east of the village centre of Lenham 0.6 miles (0.97 km) from the source of the River Great Stour; both rise on the Greensand Ridge. Its length is c10 miles (16 km). It enters the River Medway at Maidstone.
The river flows in a generally westerly direction. Today it runs parallel with the M20 motorway for much of the first part of its journey: it passes between the hamlet of Fairbourne Heath and Harrietsham; after Broomfield the river becomes the lake adjoining Leeds Castle. The Len enters the town of Maidstone south of Bearsted and its waters become the lake in Mote Park; and it enters the River Medway c1.25 miles (2.01 km) beyond.
The river powered a number of watermills on itself and its tributaries in the parishes of Ulcombe, Leeds, Hollingbourne, Boxley and Maidstone.
. . . .
Leeds Castle Mill
A mill was recorded at Broomfield in the Domesday book. This predated the building of a mill by either Robert de Crevecoeur or his son Hamo de Crevecoeur in 1100. Originally built as a corn mill, there is some evidence that it had been converted to a fulling mill by 1368. This being the work of Thomas Burgeys of Smarden. The surviving mill building dates from the early thirteenth century and fell out of use in the middle seventeenth century. The building was some 16 feet (4.88 m) wide, 42 feet (12.80 m) long and 35 feet (10.67 m) high. The waterwheel was driven from the lake to the castle. The mill was located between the Outer Barbican and Inner Barbican and the breast shot waterwheel would have been some 10 feet (3.05 m) or 11 feet (3.35 m) diameter and 3 feet (0.91 m) wide. The remains of a pair of Peak millstones were recorded as lying in the wheel pit in 1967. The stones seemed to be of early nineteenth century manufacture and it is not known whether they came from this mill of one of the other mills owned by the Leeds Castle estate."