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New life restored to old mill

Rich history of milling and the arrival of a full-time miller steeped in the history of the craft help to propel Stratford Hall Plantation to launch and finish a renovation of its operational gristmill.

ROB HEDELT •   Rob Hedelt's archive •   E-mail Rob Hedelt

Date published: 10/14/2003

By ROB HEDELT

WHEN WATER was sent spilling into the 56 slatted "buckets" on the 17-foot water wheel at Stratford Hall Plantation's working gristmill three years ago, the Westmoreland County example of Old World know-how would creak to life.

For a while, spillway water would turn the wheel, spinning a drive shaft that inside the mill bore a massive pit gear--a 14-foot wheel of oak spiked with 122 envelope-sized teeth of hard-rock maple.

When the drive was engaged and the teeth meshed into a smaller gear with dowellike bars, the wheel's power was sent through a series of smaller wooden shafts and interlocking gears to rotate the mill's main component, a 2,000-pound circular slice of Pennsylvania sandstone grooved for grinding.

On good days, miller Steve Bashore could turn 100 pounds of yellow corn into meal or grits before the wheel ground to a stop because of leaks from rotten sections that bled away so much water it quit turning.

Other times, wear and rot in the gears, teeth and even the frame of the heavy mill machinery halted milling, or made Stratford officials worry about the structural integrity of the site where corn and grain was ground.

"When we pulled some of those posts and beams out of there, you could flake off whole chunks with your hand," he said. "Insects and rot had caught up with it."

That's why, for the past 27 months, Stratford Hall Plantation, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, has undertaken a nearly total, $260,000 renovation of its gristmill.

There are two reasons this mill became one of the first Colonial era mills to be fully renovated:

First--the integral role it has played in the estate's history, including the part played by business giant General Mills in the construction of the current mill in the 1930s.

Second--The arrival of Bashore, a young history major who developed a passion for mills through his involvement with an international group dedicated to their preservation.

Thomas Lee, founder of the Ohio Company and acting governor of Virginia, purchased the land for Stratford Hall Plantation in 1717 and built the the brick Georgian Great House there from 1730-38.

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Date published: 10/14/2003