The history of a property that stretches back nearly four hundred and fifty years is a fascinating journey through time. As it stands today, The Wiremill is fast becoming famous as one of the ‘must visit’ places in Surrey for exceptional food, great drinks & fun service, but its past holds many wonderful secrets.

We would like to thank the authors of this script, who have no doubt spent many hours researching the history of The Wiremill.

Wiremill – from Hammer Mill to Pub (more than just a pub)

The shortened version for those with an interest

It has been established that the property known as Wiremill dates to about 1561, working as a hammer mill known as the Woodcock Forge. There is also evidence for the existence of a water-powered flourmill in the vicinity before that date, but the exact location has not yet been established. The site that accommodated the original hammer mill has been used for the structure nearest the pond-day running east/west, although little survives of any original building. It has also been established that the lake, originally termed a ‘pond’, was man-made and the third in a series of man-made lakes along a tributary to the River Eden that served the iron industry of Felbridge from the mid 16th to late 18th centuries.

It has also been established that between 1787 and 1800 the Woodcock Forge was converted as a wire mill. The change of use would have been relatively simple as both a hammer mill and wire mill needed a pair of waterwheels to run the hammer and bellows, both required in the process of converting pig iron to bar iron, as in the hammer mill, or metal ingots, be it copper, brass, iron or precious metal, to wire. The only additional requirement of a wire mill was larger building with good light to house the drawing machinery. This requirement necessitated the construction of the building that runs north from the original structure.

The next development of Wiremill came around 1817 when it ceased being a wire mill and was converted as a flour mill, grinding trefoil seed and corn. As a flourmill the hammer, bellows and drawing machinery were redundant being replaced by a flour milling mechanism, and having two pairs of grind stones suggests that both waterwheels were still in use. Wiremill remained a flourmill for just short of a hundred years before it was sold off as part of the break-up of the Felbridge Place estate. The sale brought to an end over three hundred and fifty years of milling on the premises, the building being converted first as a dwelling house and then for use in the leisure industry, as a hotel, later with the addition of a country club, and then as a bar and restaurant as it is still run today.

It is inevitable that with a building that is nearly four hundred and fifty years old, traditions have been attributed to it other the years. A widely known local legend is that the nails for the re-building of St Paul’s Cathedral were wrought at Wiremill. The original cathedral burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666, the commission for the new design being won by Sir Christopher Wren. The impressive building that we see today is reputed to be the fourth on the site, being built between 1675 and 1710, during the time that Jeremy Johnson held Wiremill as the Woodcock Forge.

Wiremill, inevitably due to its great age, is also reported to be haunted. The ghost is reputed to be that of a worker who fell into the ‘lower mechanism’. For the mill to have any ‘lower mechanism’ implies that it was a flourmill at the time of the accident, however there is no evidence for such an accident being reported. This story may have been fabricated in more recent years helping to spice up its history, but when you’re here late at night you can feel something in the air!

Wiremill still retains fragments the original hammer and wire mill buildings but is now devoid of any machinery except a millstone propped up against a wall outside, (relocated from the main bar where it used to stand), a reminder of its life as a flourmill, the last phase of the milling operations in the history of a property that stretches back nearly four hundred and fifty years.