Tyne and Wear HER(697): Swalwell mill - Details
697
Gateshead
Swalwell mill
Swalwell
NZ26SW
Industrial
Water Power Production Site
Watermill
Medieval
C14
Documentary Evidence
The earliest explicit reference to a mill at Swalwell is in Hatfield's Survey (c.1382), when it was held communally by the tenants. As William Swalwell held the milldam it must be assumed to have been a watermill. But note that Boldon Buke (1183 survey of land belonging to the Bishop of Durham, Hugh du Puiset) records a mill under the heading of Whickham, and this may have referred to Swalwell. The Parliamentary Survey of 1647 lists "...a Water Corn Milne...called... Swalwell Milne...now quite decayed and fallen to the ground", as the only mill in the manor of Whickham. Bourn noted the existence of a watermill in the early 19th century.
204
624
NZ204624
<< HER 697 >> W. Greenwell, ed. 1852, Boldon Buke, Surtees Society, 25, p. 67
W. Greenwell, ed. 1856, Bishop Hatfield's Survey, Surtees Society, 32, p. 93
D.A. Kirby, ed. 1972, Parliamentary Surveys of the Bishopric of Durham, Surtees Society, II 185, pp. 81-2
1770, Whickham and Swalwell Low Ground, belonging to Sir James Clavering, BP/3/165 -Gateshead Library Local Studies
W. Bourn, 1893, Whickham Parish, p. 113
R. Surtees, 1820, History of...Durham, II, p. 247; Eric Clavering and Alan Rounding, 1995, Early Tyneside Industrialism: The lower Derwent and Blaydon Burn Valleys 1550-1700, Archaeologia Aeliana, Series 5, Vol XXIII, page 255