Servants of the Abbey: Making Use of the Rivers
To the south was a range of buildings staffed by employees. Ostlers looked after the horses in the stable block by the South Gate. Immediately to the east of this was the Abbey Mill, straddling the perimeter wall and the Holy Brook stream that powered it. This stream diverges from the Kennet at Theale five miles up river and in medieval times it ran through the town open to the sky. It is a natural channel, deepened and given made-up banks by the monks and it ran at a higher level than the Kennet before dropping to meet the river again at the Abbey Wharf just beyond the Mill, its hurrying waters turning the underside of the mill wheel. In Abbey times there was a secondary channel which led any excess water off to the south.
The Mill was a stone building, contrasting with the more usual wooden structures such as can still be seen at Mapledurham. The miller had great strength from lifting the sacks of grain and a 'miller's thumb' broadened by constant testing of the fineness of the flour. Just to the north of the Mill the baker had his bakehouse. Nearby was a dovecote providing bird flesh for the monks to eat and fish for the Refectory table probably came from fish-ponds just outside the monastery walls.
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Marks like this were left on the building stones of the
Abbey to identify their individual work
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