Ebridge Mill is also sometimes known as North Walsham Mill. The old mill was 5 storeys high and built of red brick with a slate roof.

The mill remained in the ownership of the family within Cubbitt & Walker Ltd from 1869 - 1998 when it was sold to Duffields and subsequently closed.

When the goodwill of the flour milling business was sold to the Millers' Mutual Association in 1966, the milling machinery was broken up leaving the old mill as an ancillary to the new provender mill built alongside.

Tithe Award 1842
Map, James WRIGHT, Land Surveyor, Aylsham. 1841
Owner: William PARTRIDGE (of Ebridge Mill, North Walsham)
Occupier: William PARTRIDGE (of Ebridge Mill, North Walsham)

During the 1800s Ebridge mill was worked in conjunction with the nearby Ebridge towermill on Mill Hill .
The tower mill was producing flour rather than animal feed as it was driving 2 pairs of French burr stones.

NORTH WALSHAM & WITTON
To Millers & others
Superior Water Corn Mill with Dwelling House attached & Brick Tower Windmill
Late the property of Mr. William PARTRIDGE decd.
Mr. Wm. BARCHAM will offer for sale by Public Auction at the Kings Arms Inn, North Walsham on Wednesday 22 September 1841 at 3 o'c
Lot 1. Comprises all that superior & highly reputed WATER CORN Mill situate in North Walsham & Witton aforesaid & late in the occupation of the deceased Proprietor.
Also a capital BRICK TOWER WINDMILL with patent sails built only a few years since of the best materials on a lofty hill within 100 yards of the water mill. The Mill drives two pair of French Stones, contains four floors & is in every respect fitted up & adapted for occupation with the water mill...
Piece of land on which the windmill stands, 5a. 1r. 5p. more or less... Lease etc.
Apply to William PARTRIDGE, son of deceased or to Mr. WILKINSON, Solr. North Walsham.
Norfolk Chronicle - 11th & 18th September 1841

The North Walsham & Dilham Canal

The waterwheel has not been used since about 1920 and was taken out in 1972.

A Wherryman and his Family

My mother should have been christened Lewell Jane, but unfortunately my grandfather had the birth certificate made out wrongly so that she became Jane Lewell. The unfeminine Lewell came from her grandfather, well known as Old Lew from Yarmouth harbour up the Yare, Bure and Ant to the flour-mills on the North Walsham and Dilham Canal. He was a wherry-man on one of the fleet of fourteen moored on Barton Broad and belonging to the Hewitts of Wayford Bridge. Every Monday he sailed for Yarmouth Docks, arriving home on Saturday with a load of corn for the Briggate and Ebridge Mills.

* * *
Ebridge Mills and Yarmouth were a long way apart in those days, and there were none of the well-stocked shops found today by Broads' holidaymakers at every mooring place. So when the wherrymen went off to the river they took with them a week's supply of food, leaving very little in the larder for Old Lew's wife and eight children.

My grandfather, Edwin, used to accompany his father during the school holidays and he remembered the pork, butter and so on being kept up one corner of the tiny cabin on the wherry and how they "used to get pretty strong by the end of the week". Up another corner was the stove with the big iron saucepan in which all the cooking was done, always kept scrupulously clean. A few years ago this was still lying, neglected and rusty, in the back of the shed at my mother's old home at Briggate.

* * *
Old Lew lived in one of a pair of cottages still standing at Meeting Hill. The children slept four in a bed and my grandfather remembered lying there in the winter looking up at the bare tiles with the frost glistening white on their edges, or the wind making them go clickety-clack, clickety-clack against the rafters. Wages were not high, so there was never more than sufficient food and clothes for the family, and often not that. Great Grandmother would make two stone of flour into bread every week and they only ever had skim milk. Sometimes a kindly farmer would give them the runt pig or "petman" from a litter, which they would carefully nurture in a corner of the garden. This must have been a great comfort in the long winters, when there was often no work for thirteen weeks because the rivers were frozen up.

Sunday was spent mainly at the Baptist Chapel at Meeting Hill, starting with Sunday School at 9.0 a.m. Since the boys had no special Sunday boots they had laboriously to polish their weekday pair with the aid of a rabbit's foot and plenty of dubbin and they would smooth their hair to Sabbath neatness with water from the large butt by the back door.

* * *
Old Lew was a hard husband and father, but a man who worked in Ebridge Mill said about him, "They don't breed men like Lew nowadays. Strong as anything he was. They can't work like that now." He met his death like several other wherry-men: coming on board one pitch dark night at Yarmouth he slipped off the gang-plank and was sucked under the wherry by the tide. This was in 1898 when my grandfather was twenty and most of the children were still at school. All that the widow had to feed and clothe them was two shillings and sixpence per week and a stone of flour from the Relieving Officer.

* * *
Of Old Lew's brothers, John kept the shop at Meeting Hill and George was also a wherryman. He, however, survived to enjoy a peaceful old age in the almshouses as Meeting Hill. One of my Aunts remembers visiting him there with Grandfather every Sunday after chapel. The room was always very tidy and the hearthstone snowy white, for wherrymen could not bear dirt and disorder, presumably because they had to live in such a small cabin. He would sit there continually poking into order his tiny fire and talking of the adventures of his youth.

His favourite story was of a couple living in a lonely cottage on the river bank. One wild winter night the wife was in labour while her husband lay calmly asleep. She woke him to say that a baby was born and she was fine. He went off to sleep till she woke him again with the same message. Then, when a third baby arrived, he finally woke up properly saying "I'd better get up out of this afore you have any more of these."

Another of Lew's brothers, Tom, led a very different sort of life. He emigrated to America in the 1880s with his young wife and family and bought a farm at Fowlerville, Michigan where he lived in a log-house he built in a clearing. To make extra money in the early days he sometimes drove the local stagecoach along the old plank road. Through this he later met and became a friend of the great Henry Ford, who had purchased one of the old taverns on the stage-coach route and wanted some advice on restoring it.

In 1927 he celebrated his 100th birthday with a large family party at which five generations were represented. By the side of his three-storey cake was a tiny one bearing a lonely pink candle marking the first birthday of his youngest great-great-grandchild. As he had promised a year before, Henry Ford sent along an aeroplane, and Tom, white whiskers flying in the wind, went for a ride in the air, the first in all his life. He said afterwards that if he were young again he'd be running a 'plane. It is not recorded if he ever did any sailing, but he does not seem to have lacked any of the spirit and courage of his brothers.

* * *
Grandfather worked all his life in Briggate Mill close by the river; one of his sons did the same and the other went to sea in a drifter from Yarmouth. My mother remembers playing near the lock at Briggate with the other children and begging the wherrymen to let them ride on their vessels as they were slowly quanted under the bridge and through the lock. She remembers one man particularly who had his little dog with him on every trip.

All my family are known to be "mad about the water" and although the corn comes to the mills by lorry now and only a stream winds in the course of the old canal, the great-granddaughter of Old Lew still goes sailing, albeit in a tiny Firefly on a factory-encircled London reservoir.
Eastern Daily Press, Broadland Memories - 3rd December 1959

Lewel Roper, known by many as Old Lew was born on 3rd June 1840 at Worstead and he married Jane Flaxman on 6th February 1863 at Meeting Hill. They had ten or possibly eleven children. Lew was a wherryman and sailed the rivers of the broads. He died on the night 9th January 1888, on the River Yare at Yarmouth, when he slipped off the gang plank and was sucked under the wherry by the tide.

One of Lew's sons was Edwin Samuel Roper who was born on 6th July 1867. Edwin became a miller and was also a wherryman. He married Mary Jane Burton-Pye on 28th April 1892. They went on to have six children.

Edwin and Mary's eldest was Edwin Thomas (Tom), who was born on 30th November 1893 at Worstead. Tom married Edith Rous(e) on 4th August 1919, after which they had five children. Tom worked as a miller at Ebridge mill.

Tom was my husband's Grandfather. We were married in 1968 and in March of that year we went to visit them. However, our first visit to Tom and Edith as a family was on August 4th 1969. This was their Golden wedding anniversary and all the family met up to celebrate. It was a beautiful day and the family had prepared the feast for them and the 'do' was held in the school room. On this visit Tom's hens had all laid double yolkers and he swore blind that it was the influence of a pretty young girl feeding them.

Neither Tom or Edith ever left Norfolk. They were a lovely, lively couple and we hit it off straight away. I loved pottering round with Tom on his small holding where he grew almost all the family's vegetables and lots of fruit. He also kept chickens and every week he cycled from Meeting Hill to North Walsham market to sell his veg and eggs. We always went home with a car load of goodies. Tom and Edith lived in the School House at Meeting Hill. They used to hold horticultural show each year, and the first year we attended I bid for a few things. I bid for a couple of houseplants and garden produce, but I kept being outbid. Afterwards Tom said that he would like me to come every year as they had never raised so much money. Apparently the locals didn't like 'foreigners' trying to outdo them.
Janet Sorfleet - 12th February 2004

On 15th March 1969 a fire in a silo intake was put out by a fire appliance from North Walsham.

Memories of Ebridge Mill

Michael Willis was born in 1939 at Briggate. He worked full-time at Briggate_mill for a few years around 1958/9 but his memories of the mill go back to his early childhood. Later Michael went on to work at Ebridge mill.

Ebridge

I worked at Ebridge for a while, it was shift work. I didn’t like it very much. 6 till 2 wasn’t too bad. It was boring just watching the chute, waiting for the bags to fill and tying it up - it didn’t run that quick. The corn goes in and goes through the 1st break, 2nd break, 3rd break, 4th break and comes out as flour. In between you tie up supers, which is the rough offal, bran which is even rougher offal, semolina which was hardly anything and the rest goes as flour to fill 10st bags, which were then tied up.

All the supers and the bran were thrown out on to a lorry that stood there all the time. Roly Belson, who was the foreman there, came up to me and said “You can drive a lorry can’t you, you goin’ Briggate aren’t you, when you knock off at two you can take the ole lorry, put yer bike on top.” I went outside, it was a terrible load as all the sacks were just slung on there. I roped it down as best I could with my bike on the top. I drove the old Ford 4 D series through Corner Common to Briggate, reversed in the yard like all the other drivers, never hit the wall or nothing. My ole chap in the office looked up over his glasses surprised, and said “ What you doin’ driving thar bloody thing? Well - you’d better unload the bloody thing.”

I liked the driving, I’d never driven a lorry on the road before. I’d got a car licence but not a lorry one. I’d driven old lorries on a farm since I was 12 but that wasn’t the same, they were ex army trucks.

That next week Sid Blyth, who usually did the deliveries at Briggate was off sick and as I knew the round, I did the deliveries. I never looked back and from then on became the full-time driver at Briggate.

George Youngman was listed as a journeyman miller on the 1841 census. He was the son of Isaac Youngman who ran the Yarmouth Road towermill in North Walsham. George Youngman later moved on to run Witton postmill.

Kelly's 1883: Cubitt & Walker

Kelly's 1929: Cubitt & Walker

Kelly's 1937: Cubitt & Walker Ltd., oil & water

Pippa Miller 1968: Mill working and powered by electricity

1969: Ebridge took over the business of Briggate Mill, which was also owned by Cubitt & Walker

Tel. directory 1970: Cubitt & Walker

1972: Wheel removed

2003: TR Transport

27th February 2003: A planning application to convert the mill to 10 flats was rejected by North Norfolk DC

28th August 2003: Amazingly, NNDC gave consent to convert the mill to 14 holiday units

November 2005: Planning application for 12 holiday homes by Tritec Synergy. NNDC does not allow residential

February 2006: NNDC still unable agree to Tritec Synergy's scheme for conversion to holiday homes

March 2006: Tritec Synergy's scheme for conversion to holiday homes passed by NNDC after much debate