Dee Mills,
used for the grinding of corn. Although the date of the first erection of mills on this spot cannot now be ascertained, yet there is evidence of their having been there from remote antiquity. Sir Howell-y-Fwyall obtained a grant of them from Edward III. in reward for his services at the battle of Poictiers. In the fifth of Edward VI. they were granted by the Crown to Sir Richard Cotton, in exchange for the manors of Bourne and Moreton, in Lincolnshire; and by his son George they were granted in fee farm to Edmund Gamul, at a yearly rent of £100. Gamul expended a large sum in repairing the causeway originally erected by Hugh Lupus. In 1646 an order of Parliament was issued, that the mills and causeway should be destroyed, as an obstruction to trade; but this order, issued by the Puritans then in power, probably with no other view than to obtain a composition from the proprietor, was never complied with. On the alienation of the Gamul property, the greater part of the mills fell into the hands of Mr. Edward Wrench, in whose successor the property is now vested. The Dee Mills have been twice destroyed by fire within the last sixty years. The first conflagration broke out about twelve at night, of Saturday, September 26, 1789; the second, about the same hour of Saturday night, March 6, 1819; on which latter occasion the progress of the flames was so rapid, that the whole of the premises, with the exception of part of the outward wall, were destroyed in less than six hours. The loss sustained was upwards of £40,000. A third fire took place in January, 1847, which destroyed the whole of one of the mills.
We shall now proceed to notice