EBLEY MILL
A Part of Stroud's Heritage
The Site of the Old Mill
Records show a mill here as early as 1393. It was a good site as the river provided the full power of the combined Stroud and Nailsworth streams. There is now almost no trace of the site, or the river loop on which it was built. It ran between the present mill and Cainscross Road, where industrial buildings now stand.
The mill was part of a 30 acre estate which was divided in the 15th and 16th centuries between two absentee owners. Both corn grinding and the fulling of cloth was done on the site, a common arrangement at the time. In 1505 the Bennett family became tenants of the mill and their descendants still owned Ebley at the end of the 18th century. In 1587 Ebley Court was built by Thomas Bennett.
William Selwyn married the Bennett heiress and the initials of his grandson William can be seen above a window of the Glue Shed. Its position is fortuitous. In the 1780s it formed the lintel of the garden gate of Ebley Court. Already there was no explanation for its presence as his home was Matson House and there is no obvious event to mark; though he later became Governor of Jamaica. In about 1950 workmen who were restoring the building found the stone in the nettles and initially inserted it upside down.
The Turner family were tenants of the estate from about 1685 to 1788. They worked the mill as clothiers. A survey of 1744 recorded the freestone mansion house, an outhouse used as a dyehouse and the mill with four fulling stocks and a teasel raising gig. There was a newly built corn mill adjoining.
The decline of the mill began with the building of the canal. This cut across the river, forcing the moving of the weir and the creation of a new waste channel. Part of the mill pond was also filled in so perhaps it is not surprising that in 1788 Thomas Turner went bankrupt. Within a few years Stephen Clissold was the tenant and in 1799 he bought the mill for £1908.
The Long Mill
For most of his time at Ebley Clissold accepted the historic layout of the site. He may have built early weaving sheds, but they were close to the Old Mill and Ebley Court. It was only after the profitable years of the French wars that he began his great new building, as a number of other clothiers did. By then the canal was busy and there are suggestions that he had profited from improvements to cloth finishing.
The new mill was built between about 1818 and 1820, to the south of the old mill. It was a simple building architecturally, with its rows of arched mullion windows. Blocked windows show that he built only the Long Mill. However it was massive for the time; matched in size only by nearby Stanley Mill. It is one of the new generation of wide bodied mills which continued the tradition of being rectangular but which was almost twice as wide as mills of the previous century.
Ebley was sold before the New Mill was completed; even building materials were included in the sale. Apparently it stood empty until 1825 when the new owners took over. They were two cloth merchants in London and leased the mill to J.F.Marling. It is from his reports that we learn what Clissold had initiated.
Clissold had bought seven acres on the south side of the river. These were now flooded and a weir was built across the waste channel, which became the main stream. The weir created a 6 foot fall of water which was run under the mill to drive waterwheels. It is unclear how many there were originally but later there were five each with a diameter of 16 feet. These were housed in the ground floor along with the fulling stocks and the gig mills. The wheels generated 80 h.p. but despite the mill pond there tended to be a shortage of water in the summer. The water then ran out to the west side of the mill, where the approach road now is. Effectively the mill had become a bridge over a complex water system.
Marling was producing superfine cloth and kerseymeres. He concentrated the whole process of production on site. The Old Mill was used for scouring the raw wool. 71 handlooms were housed in a neighbouring building. Probably the New Mill housed the processes like carding and spinning that could benefit from waterpower. Children aged seven or more were employed at the carding machines, doing a 10-hour day. The attic floor might have been used for checking and mending the cloth, as good light was needed for this job.
SS Marling
In 1837 JF Marling went bankrupt and in 1840 his younger brothers Thomas and Samuel Stephens Marling bought the mill. They invested heavily in it, continuing the process of modernisation that Clissold began. Steam power was introduced. Probably they built the tall pedimented block which appears in Smith's painting, and a wall was erected along the towpath to give the mill privacy. Meanwhile the old mill was demolished and the Greenaways block was erected at some point before the 1880s when it was the spinning block.
Thomas left in 1842 but SS Marling built up Ebley, with a growing number of partners, into one of the major mills in the area. New machinery such as larger carding machines would explain the introduction of cast iron pillars. By 1862, when Marlings won a medal at the International Exhibition for their black and blue cloths, doeskins and cassimeres, 800 were employed at Ebley. Hundreds more were employed at Stanley Mill, bought in 1854.
The Bodley Block
One of the buildings constructed by the Marlings was a tall building that backed on to the Long Block. Decorated with a pedimented front it repeated the style of windows that Clissold had used but provided space for steam power. So a tall chimney was built next to it.
Despite his success Marling had his share of disasters. In 1852 a hole, five storeys high and 20 feet wide, was blown in the front wall of the pedimented block. In 1859 the same block was destroyed by a massive fire which caused £20,000 worth of damage. Clissold's Mill emerged unscathed and CF Bodley, who had just been employed to build Selsley Church, was commissioned to reconstruct the ruins.
Bodley's Block reflects the need for better light and higher ceilings that was demanded by the new machinery and so is in marked contrast to the preceding mill. There is no information of what it was used for except that on the ground floor it housed a steam engine using the chimney. Possibly the external boiler house was erected to provide a safer location away from the machinery. The impressive staircase turret was fireproof and passage between the two blocks was restricted to it.
Decline
When Sir SS Marling died in 1883 his son, Sir William Henry, undertook considerable re-organisation, making Stanley the centre of his operations. Parts of the property that remained close to the main road were leased off and it was proposed to lease the Greenaways mill to a worsted spinning operation. After 1920 this block was sold to a printer, Frederick Steel, who was already the tenant. Meanwhile the head office was moved to Stanley. Increasingly the company produced worsteds which were selling better than woollen cloth.
In 1920 the partnership of Marling and Evans was formed, without any members of the Marling family. This company managed to survive the Depression. In the late 1930s Ebley was the carding and spinning department for Stanley Mill. There were spinning mules on each floor of the Long Block, including the attic. On the ground floor, in 1936, the last waterwheel, perhaps the largest in the area, survived, yoked to a steam engine in the Bodley Block. However in 1938 Ebley was switched to electric power, and the wheel and steam engine were soon scrapped though the back brook continued to run along the west of the mill.
In the Bodley Block there was the steam engine, dating from about 1840, on the ground floor but the rest of the floors were filled with carding machinery.
During the war Ebley was again producing all stages of cloth, army shirting as well as apparel cloth for men and women, as Stanley was requisitioned. It was apparently very busy but in 1945 it returned to its role as a spinning mill.
Post War Ebley
Marling and Evans was associated with ICI, Courtaulds and Duponts in the development of synthetic fibres. It designed mixtures of synthetics and wool for the fashion industry as well as being at the forefront of the application of synthetics to industrial uses. Its products were in demand throughout western Europe, America and the Far East. It also made fireproof material for racing drivers and the parachute containers for the first Ariane space rockets.
At Ebley there was heavy investment in machinery. The first high speed mule in the world was installed and improved by the mill engineers. The mules were housed in the long mill from the first floor up. By now on the ground floor all evidence of the water wheels was removed and carding machines were housed, as on the ground floor of the Bodley Block. Its attic was used for storage while there was spinning on the floors below. In the 1960s the mules here were replaced by spinning frames, which dealt with the synthetics. On the first floor and over the gate the yarn was coned in preparation for return to Stanley by lorry.
Dyed material for carding and spinning was delivered from Stanley and a great variety of colours as well as different fibres, were being produced. The mill was a busy, and, by report, a happy place. However the shortage of capital for investment, competition and the depression caused the mill to close in 1981 and the production of high quality apparel cloth was centred on Stanley. The derelict mill enjoyed brief fame when it was used for the shooting of the 1986 Pirelli calendar!
A New Era
In 1986, the empty Mill was purchased by Stroud District Council, for conversion into new, centralised offices. The building was fully opened in 1990.
Although many local authorities have commissioned new civic offices over the last few years, few have pursued the option of refurbishing a major historic building. The reason for this is that there have been very few interesting historic buildings of a sufficient size in suitable locations and available at the right time. This opportunity was thus unique and offered important advantages which a new building could not. Four major factors lay behind the project:-
(a) the existing office accommodation, in six locations at Stroud, and in Dursley, its constraints and lack of suitable facilities;
(b) the need for relocation to allow the redevelopment of Stroud centre;
(c) ensuring the survival of the most prominent landmark in the district;
(d) the need to show that mills, part of Stroud's heritage, were capable of conversion to modern use, and could act as a catalyst for other 'ventures'.
The attractive new extension accommodates the Council Chamber and meeting rooms, the Staff Restaurant, Computer Suite and Print Room.
The Glue Shed
Very little is known of the building's history or original use. Mid-Victorian in origin, it had external staircases. From physical evidence, it originally had 3 storeys; probably up to when it was gutted by fire (date unknown). The first and second floors were heated by open fires, suggesting that the ground floor had no use other than storage.
The lintel above the rectangular first floor window bears the initials WS. William Selwyn was the grandson of another William Selwyn, who married into the Bennett family, owners of the site and builders of the Tudor Ebley Court. It is known that in 1780, the lintel was positioned over a garden gate at the Court. It was then found in 1950, abandoned in nettles, by builders working on the Glue Shed.
The name Glue Shed originated during the Second World War. The then little known firm Borden was relocated to part of the Ebley Mills site in 1940 to escape the bombing of London's East End. Its work included the manufacture of high performance adhesives used in the construction of wooden aircraft. The actual role of the Glue Shed itself is not known. The firm left Stroud in 1947 and settled in Romsey, where it has subsequently become world famous.
