Mike Pettigrew, a
neighbour of mine, has been researching trout
farming and fly fishing on the River Itchen, and he
has found some additional information about Chilland
mill. He has also drawn my attention to a detailed
history of the mill compiled by Robin Greenwood, a
fellow member of Worthys Local History Group; it
broadly agrees with information in our own Mills
and Millers of Hampshire, volume 1, but
gives many more details and extends our knowledge of
the fate of the mill after 1897. By this time the
mill had ceased milling and had become a fish farm.
In June 1899 the Illustrated Sporting and
Dramatic News magazine reported in an article
titled ‘Trout Culture on the Itchen’ that:
Close by the house is an old mill, in which the main
hatchery is located. The mill is a quaint building,
admirably suited to its present purpose. The
ponderous mill-wheel which for years
lay
rusting in its bearings is utilised now for driving
lathes, circular saws, and other machinery in the
carpenter’s shop, where all the apparatus of the
fishery – screens, sluices, and the like, is made;
as well as for turning the huge meat-chopping
machines, and for pumping water into the large
storage tanks from which the hatching boxes are
supplied.
