Greasby's Irby Mill, Cottage and Pub

There have been several windmills on Irby Mill Hill. The final mill was on the Greasby side of the Greasby/Irby boundary (Hillbark Road) and that miller's cottage is now the Irby Mill pub.

A mill was in operation in Irby in 1291.

The early mill (or mills) -
was situated south (towards Irby) from today's Irby Mill pub. Its exact location is not known. One report stated that it was about 100 yards from the site of the present pub, on the Irby side of the township boundary. An Irby mill was destroyed during the early 18^th century. It is likely that the mill (or mills) was a fixed wooden structure, useable only when the wind was blowing in the right direction.

The final mill -
is believed to have been built around 1720 probably to replace the aforementioned destroyed Irby mill. It was situated adjacent to the present pub, on the north side of Hillbark Road and therefore in Greasby township (in the small section of Greasby which is in Thurstaston parish, not West Kirby parish) . This is a strange location as the mill would not be exposed to southerly winds due to it being sheltered by the hill. The design was known as "post-mill" or "peg-mill". The upper part (the working part) was made of timber and sat on a stone base called the roundhouse. The timber body had a tail-beam projecting at the rear; at the end of the tail-beam was a wheel, which ran on a circular track. When the wind direction changed, the miller would push the tail-beam, thus rotating the timber body until the sails faced into the new wind. It is believed that this mill stopped working around 1878. The development of steam-engine grain mills which did not rely on suitable weather spelled the end for windmills. Greasby's Irby Mill was demolished in 1898.

The mill cottage (later to become the Irby Mill pub) -
the date of construction is not known. Logically, it would have been built at a similar time to the final mill but some of the features indicate early 19^th century construction.

A post box was fitted into the garden wall sometime between 1901 and 1906.

The cottage (a two-storey building) had a single-storey extension on the south end and a small single-storey structure on the north end. A postcard written in 1907 shows that it provided tea for visitors, presumably as a cafe. The cottage was bought in 1919 by George and Bertha Lumsden who opened it as "The Old Mill Café" in 1924. (Even today, the place is still known to some local people as "Lumsden's".)

Sometime after 1924 the following changes were made -

- the garden wall was removed and the post box relocated to the wall of the cafe extension
- a model of a windmill was fitted to the centre of the roof as a reminder of the original mill
- during the 1930s, diamond shaped windows were added to the north wall on the upper floor
- the old single-storey lean-to extension on the south wall was removed and a double gable extension was built there. This extension exceeded the width of the original cottage and formed a "T" shaped end to the building. The extension was used as a cafe and as a dance hall and the proprietor's daughter gave dancing lessons

In 1938 Higsons brewery bought the building from the Lumsdens. Higsons rented out the building intermittently and it remained as a café until the mid 1960s. The brewery made repeated development applications (starting in 1938) to the authorities. Planning rejections and various setbacks prevailed until a rejection was successfully appealed in 1979. Merseyside Archaeological Society was permitted to excavate the mill site prior to building work beginning.

The major structural changes were the demolition of the dancehall extension and its replacement with a two-storey extension that followed the alignment of the original building and was built of matching sandstone blocks. Prior to, and during, the building work, archaeological investigations were made. It was found that the north end of the building had once been a separate dwelling with its own front door onto Mill Lane.

The garden wall was rebuilt leaving visibility splays for the planned roundabout. The original post box, with its Edward VII motif, was once again installed into that wall.

The business opened as Irby Mill public house in September 1980.

The fireplace at the north end of the building is, confusingly, inscribed 1780-1980. This displays the anniversary of Higsons' brewery, not the anniversary of the building. A small stained-glass window in the north wall looks historic, but actually displays the Higsons' logo. The 1980 pub sign hanging near the front door displayed a good representation of the site's tail-beam windmill but later replacements of the sign show a fan-tail mill - a different type completely.

The road junction outside the building (i.e. Mill Lane, Arrowe Brook Lane, Mill Hill Road, Hillbark Road) was the scene of frequent accidents until a roundabout was built in 1993.

Some recollections from the mid-1950s -

"The café was a popular place with ramblers and cyclists from near and far. As well as buying snacks, it was also possible to buy a can of boiling water to make one's own hot drink."
"A group of local cyclists would meet there every second Sunday, buy their lemonade and cycle to West Kirby where they would leave their bikes and walk out to Hilbre Island."
"Other cyclists would arrive from Liverpool (via the ferries), Chester and north Wales. At times there would be well over 100 cyclists on the site. Once gathered into their groups, they would depart for the day's touring."

Merseyside Archaeological Society has published a detailed article about the history of Irby Mill and its predecessors, and about the 1979 excavations. It can be found in the Society's journal here (missing page here).