NHER 8609 (Building record) - Hermitage Drainage Mill and associated cottage

Drainage mill.
Only bottom two storeys of brick tower remain, 18th or 19th century.
Weatherboarded extension over sluice, which must have covered the scoop wheel, now houses a petrol engine.
E. Rose (NAU) 15 November 1978.

The base of the mill is built of header bond brickwork and is splayed at the bottom.
It has a door to the west and one to the east blocked; the interior is empty.
The attached pump is officially Hermitage pumping station.
The mill is shown on (S1) but not on (S2).
The adjacent house first appears on (S3) and is of two periods of post 1780 brickwork.
E. Rose, (NAU) 17 January 2001.

July 2009.
Existing house to be demolished and replaced by a new house.
See (S4) for further details
H. White (NLA), 6 July 2009

October 2010. Site visit.
Windmill first mapped on 1799 Acle Enclosure Map (S5). The 1938 OS map (S6) shows a long building (presumably an engine house) adjoining the tower to the east. No remains of this are visible although the base of a later building to the south is. The weatherboarded extention referred to above (1978) has now been now removed and the opening blocked in.
The mill tower remains are now redundant and in poor condition. Function replaced by modern submersible pumps with switch gear housed in metal cabinet to west of mill.
A. Yardy (HES), 26 October 2010.