The Mill's Story
The farmer started milling in about 1730, to produce feed for the hundreds of horses and ponies that used to pass through on their way to Stella Staithes, carrying coal from nearly mines and lead from as far away as Alston.
By 1830, the lead-mines were exhausted, corn prices were too high for a small mill to make a profit, and the railway had arrived at Blaydon, which transformed the way industrial products were transported. The mill ceased production and the farm started to depend on poultry and pigs.
When the original farmhouse was knocked down in 1903, the mill building was converted into a weathertight barn for the storage of crops. The wheel and all the mill machinery were lost.
By the 1970s, the building was derelict and the village stood on the edge of a huge area of gravel extraction. All seemed lost, but in 1994, Gateshead Council charged the Vale Mill Trust a nominal fee to buy the building and its surrounding land and restore it to its former glory.
Since then, it has gone from strength to strength!