Looking towards Shepherds Mill, Uley

sheppardsmill, on May 8, 2008, said:

As the owner of the mill featured in this photo, I thought you might like to know that it is actually 'Sheppards Mill'; named after the eponymous entrepreneur who, in the turn of the 18th/19th Century expanded the long-existing mill to produce blue serge for the British Army fighting in the Peninsula War. The mill complex, which maps show as then inluding many other buildings, now demolished, is said to have employed >1000 people at its peak. With the wealth he gained, Mr Sheppard built as his residence Gatcombe Park, now the home of the Princess Royal, but died before that building was complete. Shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, this and the other mills in the Uley Valley hit hard times, displaced by larger buildings further down this and other valleys - with greater flow of water - that could be serviced by canals - and subsequently railways. Sheppards Mill was a sawmill for the timber from the valley sides for many years and then a milking parlour and pigsty before being converted into a dwelling in the 1980s.