Stoneground flour Wheelwater, Suffolk
A working watermill on the Wheel Brook. Wheat, rye, spelt and oats from eleven farms within nine miles, ground slowly between French burr stones and sacked the same day.
Scroll to open the sluice
01 Field to flour
The harvest
The wheat you can see from the mill door goes in the barn a few days after the combine. Rye follows, then spelt, then oats when the weather lets us. Nothing travels further than a tractor can in a morning.
The wheel turns
The sluice lifts and the Wheel Brook drops down the launder into thirty-six oak buckets. The wheel never turns faster than a walking pace, and everything else in the mill follows it: the pit wheel, the wallower, the great spur wheel, the stone nut.
Grain in the hopper
Grain runs from the hopper down the shoe, and a little iron damsel rattles it towards the eye of the stone. Too fast and the stones choke. Too slow and they run dry and heat the flour. You listen for the clatter that sounds right.
Between the stones
The runner stone turns over a fixed bedstone and the furrows cut into them shear each grain open and sweep the meal outwards. Lift the runner and you can see the dressing: eight harps, hand cut with a mill bill, redone every few weeks.
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02 Set the stones
The kernels, the stones, the colour of the flour and the size of every particle change as you do. Drag the scene to look round the mill.
Grain
Tin loaves, bloomers, pizza bases and anything that needs a good rise.
Drag to look round the mill
03 The sack
Into the sack
The meal slides down the chute and falls into a cotton sack, still warm from the stones. Nothing is bleached, nothing is improved and nothing is taken out unless you ask us to sift it.
Tied and tagged
The neck is cinched and tied with a miller's knot, which any miller can undo with one pull. The tag says what is in it, how it was set and which batch it came from.
Weighed out
Return a clean cotton sack and we take 60p off the next one. Smaller bags go home in paper. Fresh flour keeps for three months in a cool cupboard, though most of ours is gone in three weeks.
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04 The small print
05 The shop
Every bag is milled to order on a Tuesday and packed on a Wednesday. Prices are for this concept page only. Nothing here can be bought.
Sifted twice. A soft, creamy white with a good rise.
£3.20
All the bran, ground fine. Sweet and nutty.
£3.10
For sourdough and dense, damp, keeping loaves.
£3.40
Gentle gluten, a golden crumb and a sweet finish.
£3.90
Porridge, oatcakes and a good flapjack.
£3.00
1.5 kg strong white, 1.5 kg dark rye, a jar of our mill starter, a banneton and a recipe card.
£28.00
Three flours, a pot of dried yeast, a tin of rolled oats and four recipes that suit a Saturday.
£19.50
Four 25 kg cotton sacks, any mix, delivered on a Thursday within thirty miles. Sacks collected on the next run.
£132.00
06 Visit
Shop Tuesday to Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday 10 to 2. Closed Mondays.
Milling days are Tuesday and Thursday, brook permitting.
Thank you. We will check the diary and write back within a day. Wear sturdy shoes: the floor is stone and a bit floury.