Acorn Bank Garden and Watermill is located at Temple Sowerby, around six miles east of the town of Penrith.
The garden and watermill are owned by the National Trust. The watermill is now leased from the National Trust and is operated by the former volunteers, who have formed Acorn Bank Watermill Trust, registered charity no 1193320
Over the past few weeks we have been working on a machine to take some of the backbreaking effort out of hand sieving our flour. We always sieve the meal because we haven't yet managed to prevent whole grains from ricocheting across the top of the stone and ending up in the product. Up to now the flour bagger has had to shake a circular stainless steel sieve by hand, OK for small quantities but desperately hard work when there is 30kg to process. The mechanical sieve consists of two wooden boxes, the inner one holding a sheet of perforated stainless steel mesh, agitated by a cam one side of the outer box and returned by sprung pushers the other side. We can turn it by hand, but also by using a variable speed power drill Today it finally became possible to try it out and, while it still needs some improvement, we were very pleased with the result - cue film....