Poole - West Butts Shore

Taylor 1765

Tithe Map (c1840)

1st Edition OS map

Present OS map

Google Maps

The windmill A timber smock type mill

The Millers Lawrence Tullock - twine spinner

Present site condition

Notes and comments

Records at the Dorset CRO^[1] contain a series of letters from 1791 to 1793 concerning the erection of a windmill in Manor of Canford on the Poole mudflats.

Sir John Webb was the last of his family line who had held the Manor of Canford Magna & Poole since 1611. He had been in dispute for many years over the ownership of the reclaimed mudflats around the quay area of Poole. After his death in 1797, his trustee Edward Arrowsmith ceased the litigation and the Enclosure Acts finally resolved the issue with the town gaining 1000 acres of land in exchange for giving up their rights over the rest of the manor.

Laurence Tullock who was a twine spinner, occupied a spinning house which had been erected in 1784^[2] and extended some 60 x 15 feet onto land between high & low water marks at West Butts. A windmill had been built slightly later as a means of power for his spinning processes.

West Butts shore was an area of land originally reclaimed from the sea. The Great Canford Enclosure Award^[3] locates the land around West Butts Green (near the present West Butts Street) as being owned by Tullock's partner John Bishop Bunn in 1822. The associated map shows one building with the layout of a twine walk or yard and with the earlier records, would seem to site a windmill here.^[4]

In April 1791, Sir John Webb wrote to Laurance Tullock asking by what right his manorial rights have been encroached upon with the erection of a windmill. This would appear to indicate that the mill was built without permission just prior to this date. He refused initially to take a lease on the mudflat but his stand weakens later in the year :

Being convins of my Imprudence I acknowledge my error in being too often involuntarily overcome by constitutional Heat which I have reason to lament and ready to confess that I am really sorry ............as I am going out of trade.

Sir John Webb’s lawyer then used a bizarre piece of law to solve the problem using the fictional characters^[5] of John Doe and Richard Roe.

In 1791, John Doe on the demise of Sir John Webb v. Lawrence Tulock (Declaration of Ejectment)^[6]Richard Roe .........was attached to answer John Doe in a plea wherefore with force of arms he entered into one messuage, one engine house, one wharf, one outhouse, one quay and 2 acres of land......which Sir John Webb Baronet had demised to said John Doe for a term which is not yet expired and ejected him from said farm whereupon the said John Doe says he is injured and hath damage to value of £20 and thereon he brings a suit.

Richard Roe appears to have acted on behalf of Lawrence Tullock and a letter from Roe to Tulloock is also given in this account.

When asked his opinion in February 1792, William Sandford of the Middle Temple advised against the Lord of the Manor of Canford taking legal action against the corporation and their leasee Lawrence Tullock . However, the dispute continued and the windmill is mentioned again at the summer assize of 1792 between the Lord of the Manor of Canford and the Corporation's lessee^[7].

Nevertheless, Tullock seems to have remained trading (with perhaps the assistance of his landlord) and the last letter of 22nd June 1793 records that 15 guineas had been paid for the rent of the wind engine and wharf. He had also agreed to pay 5s a year for the piece of waste ground on which a storehouse was partly built.

The question still remained as to the extent that the nearby spinning house was sited on the mudflats. Tullock's last comment stated that unless the engine was to be at a lower rent, they will abandon it and erect a water engine to answer the same purpose.

Contemporary insurance policies add some further detail:

[Sun Fire Policy No 584591 ]^[8] of 16 June 1791

Lawrance Tullock & John Bunn, of Poole in Dorset, Twine Spinners. On their dwelling house and offices adjoining situated as aforesaid brick and tiled £200. Long Spinning House and Counting House adjoining with loft over near £350. Utensils & stock £350. Wind Millhouse in West Butts near, Timber, £200. Mill and going gears therein £100. Utensils and stock therein £350.

Another fire insurance record two years later on 7th June 1793 (seemingly taken out by the Lord of the Manor) records a hemp beating mill.

[Royal Insurance Fire Insurance Policy No 134140 ]:^[9]

Sir John Webb, Baronet, On a windmill for beating hemp, timber built, situate near Poole in the Co of Dorset £200.

Interestingly, the mill is referred to as a smock type mill and as being used in an industrial process of twine spinning rather than corn milling. A smock mill may well have been chosen due to the need for lightweight construction on the mudflats. Judging by the value given for the mill, it must have been relatively small. Twine spinning required that hemp was first prepared in balling or bolling mills, many water powered ones were used in Dorset's main hemp & flax area in and surrounding Bridport.

After harvesting by hand and threshing out the seeds, the hemp and flax were left exposed in the field to be release the stronger fibres. In later times, the fibres were separated in water (a process known as “retting”) with the crop being stacked in ponds or tanks to allow the soft material to rot away. Coarser hemp was used for rope whilst flax was used for twine, nets, sailcloth and some linens. From the early C19th, singling or scutching machinery was used to separate the fibres. Balling or balling further processed the flax or hemp by crushing the stems with water or wind driven tilt hammers. In the early years of C19th, William Stevenson describes this process in his General View of Agriculture of the County of Dorset. ^[10]

^{Footnotes / References}

^[1] CRO (Ref D.1/9433 a-h) . Letter about Tullocks mill (ref D.1/9433)

^[2] May VJ, DNH&AS Vol 90, 1968 p 152 Reclaimation & shoreline change in Poole Harbour

^[3] CRO, Great Canford Enclosure Award 1822 (map E)

^[4] Bone M R, SDNQ Vol XXX1 (247) p 431.

^[5] The writer is indebted to Mr Roy Gregory for the following very clear explanation of this bizarre piece of legal practice : ...............Richard Doe and John Doe in fact never existed, they are a legal fiction and can be found in legal actions all over the country. The fiction arises from the fact that English law was trying to adapt itself from a system designed to meet the feudal system to one capable of coping with the demands of commerce, a change which had been going on for centuries and became more and more complicated. If an owner of land wanted to defend his title, he had a very long established remedy. But it was slow and tedious. The law had however, evolved an action of Ejectment , which enabled a person dispossessed of land to recover possession. Unfortunately this remedy, which was fairly short and simple was eonly open to a leaseholder, not a freeholder.

Thus, as happened in this case, Webb, the freeholder, was allowed to pretend that he had leased the land to John Doe, an imaginary person, and that John Doe had been ejected by anothei non-existent person, Richard Roe. Thus Webb would begin his action with Doe as nominal plaintiff against Roe as the noniinal defendant, but he would first serve on Tullock a notice signed by "your loving friend Roe”, in which Roe informed Tullock that Roe claimed no interest in the land and advised Tullock to defend the action. The fictitious parties then disappeared and the stage was cleared for the proceedings between the two real people. The action would usually be referred to as 'John Doe on the demise (i.e.lease) of Webb v Tullock. Poor old Tullock could not protest against the fictions because unless he accepted them he could not defend the action and judgement would be given without him.

^[6] Poole Borough Records Vol 4 ref s1758 with

^[7] Hutchins J, History of Dorset (3rd Edition, 1861-70) vol 1 p17.

^[8] SDNQ XXX pt 303 p171-2 - Insurance valuations of textile firms in Dorset & Somerset

^[9] This insurance record is quoted by M J Way in his unpublished work (DCM) as relating to another unknown windmill "near to" Poole. However, from the legal correspondence researched at DCRO, it can be seen that Sir John Webb is the Lord of the Manor. It may be that he decided to assist his tenant ? It is highly unlikely that this refers to another windmill.

^[10] Stevenson, Wm General View of Agriculture of the County of Dorset 1812, p293.

'Balling mills, or more properly , bawling mills, so called from the noise they make, are employed to

separate the fibres of the hemp, which is laid in hollows, and struck repeatedly by heavy pieces of

timber (called stampers, rounded at one end) which are lifted by mill work and descend by their own

weight; a boy being employed to turn the hemp over in the interval between each stroke.'

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