You now pass over Tannery Bridge, also known as Mill Bridge, which crosses the Downton or Wild Weir (also known as the Mill Stream). A new bridge was built during 2007 and 2008. the notice board on which the Heritage trail plaque is sited was used by the contractors for posting updates on the works in progress. Once the project was completed the board was left for use by the Parish Council.
On the opposite side of the road there was once a basket works in the area of Casterbridge House. American officers were billeted at the Mill House during World War Two. On returning home drunk one evening one officer started firing his pistol in the hallway - a bullet-hole survives in the floor tiling.
The old mills, now all in residential use, are grade II listed buildings. The Bishop of Winchester owned seven mills in Downton in 1086. The buildings remaining today were originally used as a grist mill, a paper mill and a corn mill.
It is likely that older fulling mills in the village were used in connection with the wool and felt trades. The prosperity of nearby Salisbury was largely founded on wool and many of the surrounding villages, including Downton, also benefited, as the surrounding downs were used for the grazing of sheep. Salisbury’s speciality was a striped cloth known as a ray.
The paper mill was owned in 1781 by Joseph Jellyman and in 1843 by William Stradling. From 1885 to 1890 it was owned by Wiggin, Teape, Carter and Barlow and then by Mark Palmer and Son, the last paper manufacturing firm in Downton, who ceased trading in 1919. One interesting fact for the paper mill is that the first Beatrix Potter book was printed on paper made here. The grist mill was closed in 1920 but re-opened in 1935 as a hydro-electric generating station, operated by the Downton Electric Light Co Ltd and subsequently taken over by the British Electricity Authority (1950s) and then the Central Electricity Generating Board (1960s). The generating station eventually closed in 1973.
A by-product that became famous and helped to support the running of the generating station was the Downton eel. Fish were caught in large numbers in an eel trap below the old mill, then crated up and sent to restaurants on the London train.
There is an area of land behind the mills, known as ‘the Island’, which is said to have possibly once been the site of a Saxon palace or villa.
Passing around the bend, on your left appears the main old tannery building. This was erected in 1919 on the site of the original Tannery House (also known as Avon House). Prior to this the site as a whole had been known as the Tan Yard.
The site was redeveloped in the early 21st century - the facade of the main tannery building was retained and new flats were built behind it. All the other buildings were demolished and the Church Leat development was built in their place. The development resulted in a sensitive treatment of the most prominent site in the entire village.
