A Millstone Round My Neck: The Restoration of a Cornish Water Mill

by Norman Thelwell

A Millstone Round My Neck

Genres: Nonfiction, Architecture, Memoir

174 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1981

About the author

Norman Thelwell was an English cartoonist well-known for his humorous illustrations of ponies and horses. A promising young student from Liverpool College of Art, he soon became a contributor to the satirical magazine Punch in the 1950s, and earned many lasting devotees by illustrating Chicko in the British boys' comic Eagle.

Known to many only as Thelwell, he found his true comic niche with Pony Club girls and ponies refusing fences, a subject for which he became best-known. His cartoons and drawings delighted millions.

For the last quarter of a century of his life he lived in the Test Valley at Timsbury, near Romsey, gradually restoring a farm house and landscaping the grounds which gave rise to his first factual book, A Plank Bridge by a Pool, which detailed the first two lakes he dug there. A third lake was later featured on the BBC’s South Today programme. Written much earlier, but published three years later, A Millstone Round My Neck described his experiences in re-building a Cornish water mill (Addicroft Mill at Liskeard, which he called Penruin), that was sold before the book was published. He always loved old buildings, and in his auto-biography, Wrestling with a Pencil wrote about his joy in the beauty of old cottages.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back cover blurb: Norman Thelwell's first autobiographical book, A Plank Bridge By A Pond, in which he described the making of the garden at his home in Hampshire, was received with enthusiasm and delight. Now, with the ease of a born storyteller, he gives an eloquent and amusing account of the perils and pleasures inherent in the renovation of a remote Cornish water mill, vividly illustrated with his characteristic line drawings.

Opening: The old blue rover nosed its way between the high Cornish banks draped with pennywort and trembling primroses. We could not see the surrounding countryside except for occasional glimpses of sunlit fields as we passed by gateways recessed deeply into the overgrown walls.



You probably know Thelwell from his pony club illustrations such as the one above, however this book is his second memoir and concerns the procurement of a mill in deepest Cornwell.

It lay before us in the wooded valley like a long-awaited toy at the foot of the bed on Christmas morning. It was small and compact and had that perfection of shape and proportion so often seen in buildings which architects refer to as 'functional': buildings erected in a certain place for a certain reason.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous book, lavishly illustrated by the author, a British countryside artist and cartoonist.

Thelwell and his wife were able to buy and restore a watermill and cottage in Cornwall. He describes the stumbling blocks of irregular builders, obstinate cattle, overgrown roads and odd villagers. As an artist and a fisherman he loved the site at once and was determined to stop the buildings from collapsing.

We hear some adventures with his fishing friends and his artist and boules playing friends. The two didn't really mix because he couldn't get either kind of work done if he tried to do both. The fairy pools in his little river were narrow banked and hemmed with trees and bushes, sometimes mild and sometimes in flood. A six-foot rod was required so as not to get caught up in trees.

One pal knew how the watermill had worked and was able to sort out the jumble of stones, gears, shafts, belts, hoppers, nails and so on to help establish what had been the operating system, while the breast-shot mill wheel was restored.

We also hear a little of the author's life and the state of Britain at the time - villages had been emptied with the Industrial Revolution, but now city people wanted to move back to the country, only to bulldoze many charming cottages. Some people were quietly buying up cottages, old churches and other buildings and restoring their beauty. I enjoyed this kind of detail a lot. As I am a nature lover I also loved the nature notes. Overall this is a fascinating book and I laughed aloud several times.

[Sula · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of anecdotes relating to his restoration of a Cornish water-mill. Like with A Plank Bridge by a Pool it has humour, poetic descriptions and beautiful illustrations. I enjoyed his description on how the mill worked, with the little details that brought it to life, like the piece of tin nailed to a beam for cutting the string.

[Wanda]

15 JUN 2016 - a recommendation through Bettie. Many Thanks Dear Friend