Hovis Mill Lane

Hulls Mill House is an incredible five-bedroom house that dates in part to the mid-16th century. It lies in a bucolic position next to a mill and millpond, which is inhabited by ducks, moorhens, kingfishers plus the occasional otter, and is well protected by the garden’s own river frontage. Extending over 3,300 sq ft internally, the house is complete with a beautifully planted garden that has a pond of its own, plus an orchard and brick cowshed, now used as a workshop, and an attached cart lodge. The present mill is Victorian, but the Domesday Book records that a mill has stood on the site since 1086. Most recently it was the smallest of the East Anglian Hovis mills, until both the mill and the house were bought and used residentially.

Architectural historian John Walker (1906-95) dated the house to the mid-16th century, suggesting it could have belonged to the owner of the neighbouring mill. Walker theorised that the oldest part of the house was perhaps built against a medieval open hall to form a private parlour wing for the owner, since it was clearly attached to another building at one stage (despite being almost a complete house in itself). He pointed out that these “parlour wing houses” appear in larger homes of the era, such as the wings at Gainsborough Old Hall and Thornbury Castle, forming a private apartment for the owner and their family, away from the day-to-day activities of the rest of the house. He proposed that Hulls Mill House may have been copying this, albeit on a smaller scale.

Second World War artist Eric Ravilious (1903-42) wrote about Hulls Mill House and the surrounding area in a letter to Helen Binyon, in which he refers to it as “[an] extraordinarily attractive place” (from ‘Ravilious in Pictures: A Country Life‘ by James Russell). Ravilious lived in Castle Hedingham and painted locally; his paintings of the area can be found in the Fry Gallery in Saffron Waldron.