The Lost Cottages - Cae Tacnal Fulling Mill, Caerhun Parish

This is another of my favourite little local ruins, because I grew up with the freedom to play and explore around it. I haven't been able to find any information online about this place, but local knowledge is that it was a fulling mill. It's such a modest little ruin that you'd barely know it was there when approaching from the road side, although it is more visible from across the stream.

A footpath runs across the field just up the hill from the mill. The building is at Ordnance Survey grid reference SH 7529 7019, but isn't marked on the current map. It does appear, unroofed, on the 1888-1913 map. My guess is that the place is post-mediaeval, but I imagine that it's a good few hundred years old. The name of the building is unknown, if it had one. The farm nearby is Cae Tacnal, and the fulling mill itself would have been referred to as a pandy.

Buildings like this serve to remind us that the countryside of our past wasn't necessarily a peaceful, non-industrial place. The hill is still used for farming, but in the past small scale industry would have run alongside. Further down the lane is a spot known as an area for lime burning, to make quicklime. In farmhouses there would have been a variety of industries; baking, churning, and the spinning and weaving associated with small scale, personal use fabric production. 

It seems that fulling cloth would have been a noisy, smelly, labour intensive process, designed to clean and remove the natural oils from woven woollen fabrics, to help the dyes take, and to tighten the loose fibres of the cloth. The cloth would have first been treated with urine, then with Fuller's earth - more often known now for its use as cat litter - and washed with soapwort. Soapwort is certainly grown locally. It abounds in our garden.

From the north side the mill is almost entirely invisible, sitting as it does down in the bank of the stream. When the mill was in use the walls would have been higher, and visible from this side. 

This western cell appears to be where the waterwheel, and so any associated machinery, would have been sited. The size of this little building makes me think the fulling that went on here was a local affair, perhaps serving only the neighbourhood houses and their domestic needs. Local women would have spun wool and woven cloth to be made into everything from flannel underwear to blankets, and parts of their everyday wear which have become known as the Welsh national costume. See some amazing photos of formidable looking late 19th century Welsh women in their national dress here. 

There's a curiously strong sense of neighbourly connection in the thought that the inhabitants of nearby houses would have donated urine to the cause, and probably had their fabrics treated at the mill with this mixture. The urine cleaned the cloth as well as whitening it.

The eastern cell is almost entirely demolished, and from this angle presents as little more than a pile of mossy stones. It seems that hot water would have been very necessary for the fulling process; the first stage was to apply soap and hot water and trample the cloth in a washtub (or, more efficiently, between rollers), for an initial cleaning. It seems more likely to me that, if the building had a fireplace, it would have been in this second cell, while the first was devoted to the mill machinery.

This turn of the (20th) century postcard of a pandy at Dolgellau shows that it's possible for these buildings to be quite small, and the Cae Tacnal pandy would probably have looked more imposing when it was complete. The man in the doorway provides scale. There's no chimney on this mill, which implies water was not heated in this building. Some pictures of fulling mills show them with chimneys, and some without.

 

This mill has an overshot wheel, which could have been 70% efficient. I think the height of the Cae Tacnal pandy's mill pond above the building would have been quite sufficient to run an overshot wheel, with water arriving through a wooden aquaduct.

From little to large; up the valley in Trefriw, a fulling mill a little higher up the river led to the eventual building of this huge three-roofed mill for weaving woollen products. This mill has been owned by the same family since 1859, but this building was constructed, according to the History Points site, in 1970. My mother remembers visiting the old mill shop - then a wooden building, to her memory - to buy a blanket to take with her to university in the 1960s. The 1888-1913 map shows the two earlier mills that stood on the site; a corn mill and a saw mill.

The difference between these two mills shows a fascinating dichotomy, almost like the evolution of species. While the tiny local fulling mill has become extinct, and often these mills are remembered only by the inclusion of 'pandy' in place names, this business has expanded into mechanical weaving, evolving to keep a strong foothold in the modern world. The Trefriw Woollen Mills make distinctive, bright and beautiful cloth weaves that can be recognised anywhere, and have always had a place in our home.

The eastern cell of the tiny Cae Tacnal mill does still have a small corner of the east wall intact. This end wall is too demolished, though, to see if it once held a fireplace.

From the stream side, more of both cells appears intact. Although some of the cornerstones have been faced, in general the construction is quite rough.

Looking over into the eastern cell from the stream side. It seems that most of the rubble is inside the walls.

Looking down into the western cell from the north side. If this is where the mill machinery was it would also be the locus for most of the noise. The water wheel would have powered large wooden mallets which beat the cloth to clean it and tighten the weave. See a diagram of the typical machinery here.

The hole through the wall to the stream - a fun place to crawl through as a child, although more of a squeeze as an adult. This hole is a little puzzling, not knowing enough about the mechanics of these things. There is definitely wear on the lower stone from something turning. But the gap through the walls seems very low down, if it were supposed to hold a shaft going to the centre of a wheel. Also, I'm not sure why the hole would need to be so big. The lowness could be explained by a silted up wheel pit. There certainly is a lot of silt in the stream bed immediately on the other side.

A closer look at the worn hole in the stone forming the bottom of the hole through the wall.

The fulling process, after the initial washing, would have been threefold. The first run would full the cloth (beating it with mallets powered by the water wheel) in stale urine. The second run would full it with Fuller's earth, a type of clay particularly good at absorbing oil and dirt. The third would use soap, probably from the soapwort plant, to give it a final clean. The process would both clean and thicken the cloth.

Just above and to the right is a little nook in the wall. Possibly this was original. Little nooks like this are quite often seen in similar walls. Alternatively, a rock could simply have fallen out.

A bird has taken advantage of this little space to build a sheltered, if low down, nest. This nest has been here for a few years.

The south-western corner of the western cell, which is level with the ground behind the western wall. It's uncertain how much deeper the cell goes, because the floor is covered in fallen stones.

The western cell from the stream side. The stream flows directly past the corner of this cell, only just out of frame across the bottom of the photograph. A wheel pit would have been in part underneath this tree, and could easily have filled in over time.

A closer look at the low-down hole through the wall. If there once were a wheel pit dug out here, no sign remains.

About a hundred yards up the stream are what appear to be the remnants of a dam, presumably creating a mill pond to control the flow of water to the wheel. Neighbours from nearby Pant Yr Iwrch recalled the stream being much fuller in their youth, and being able to catch quite large fish. Since that time a leat has been built across the mountain, diverting a lot of the water from the streams that run down into the valley.

Standing on top of the dam remnant, looking up the stream. With this dam in good repair, a sizeable pool could have been created here.

Looking back down at the dam remnant. It's quite a solid wall but there don't seem to be signs of one on the other side of the flow. It's possible any remains would have been washed away in floods, especially if destabilised by the trees growing there. Perhaps the centre of the dam was controlled with a wooden gate.

Somewhere near the mill there would also have been a tenter's field. This would be a flat space with a tentering frame erected, upon which the fulled cloth would be stretched, and fixed with tenterhooks, to enable it to dry flat and without distortion. It also stretched a little more length into the fabrics shrunken by the fulling process. A rather interesting snippet on one site mentions that there was an 'Act of Parliament against stretching cloth excessively, passed in 1550, and directed particularly at the Welsh cloth makers.' 

There are some reasonably sized, reasonably level fields next to this fulling mill, so perhaps the tentering frame would have been sited there. No trace remains, however. It's unknown if any evidence of this survives in the field names.

Sources: http://www.witheridge-historical-archive.com/fulling.htm

https://www.tuckershall.org.uk/hall/history/processes/14-fulling-or-tucking

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling

https://www.cumbria-industries.org.uk/wool/fulling-mills-in-cumbria/

Crankshaw, William P. (1927). Report on a Survey of the Welsh Textile Industry Made on the Behalf of the University of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press Board.

I also thank staff at the Trefriw Woollen Mills for their help.