My thanks to David Howard for lending me a 1945 sales document for a building that most of us know as Cricklade House but was then called Kilworth.

Between 1926 and 1944, the house was owned by Charles Robert Gilliat who had bought it from Col Robert Frederick Ratcliff, a former MP for Burton-on-Trent who purchased it in 1913.

Gilliat was a tobacco merchant from Stoke Poges and ran the house as a private establishment, complete with butler, cook and housemaid.

The whole estate comprised 33 acres and included an extensive area to the east of Charlton Road through which flowed a large stretch of the river Anton, providing excellent dry-fly fishing, as well as shooting grounds.

Westwards the estate included a further stretch of the river as it ran towards the town mill.

It was a far cry from the modest house that would have once served the tenant miller.

The mill buildings themselves stood just a few yards from the front door and also nearby was a clutch of farm buildings that formed the nucleus of Cricklade farm, though its associated fields were scattered around the town and their number varied according to prevailing prosperity.

When Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, Andover had six mills, one of which was Cricklade.

The name can be broken down into old English – ‘Cryke’ meaning a bend and ‘lade’ meaning a watercourse or mill race.

In 1424 a Richard Crekklade is mentioned in the local archives and just over a hundred years later, both Crykelade Ferm and Crykelade Mille were mentioned in a legal dispute.

The position of miller was not a lowly one and in 1830 Joseph Wakeford was both the miller at Cricklade and a member of the governing corporation.

After 1835, national reform of the corporations enfranchised more of the townspeople and enabled men of the community to serve on the new town councils; a reflection of Joseph Wakeford’s local standing was that he topped the poll for one of 12 seats.

Officially, he was still a miller in 1844 but it seems likely that the actual work was done by miller Henry Head who lived there.

By 1851 there were two distinct households, both described as Cricklade Mill: farmer Richard Taylor and miller Joseph Head (son of Henry) who was still at the mill ten years later.

After that the trail of Cricklade millers runs cold.

Perhaps he was the last resident miller.

In the 1860s and ’70s, Edward Wolfe was farming there.

He was an entrepreneurial character who, along with his brother, had previously kept the Star and Garter hotel and both were described in a directory of 1855 as ‘wine and spirit, corn, coal and manure merchants’.

The mill buildings were still standing in 1937, according to the Ordnance Survey map but milling must have long since ceased and it is unlikely that a working mill survived the gentrification of Cricklade House that began in 1895 with the addition of a billiard room.

Soon afterwards, a servants’ hall and kitchen were built, as it gradually evolved from a modest mill house to a sporting estate.

McDougal’s bought it after 1951 for use as a research centre for its flour products and in the mid 1960s, it became a centre for further education.

Today, it is the Andover Music Academy, a part of Andover college.

However, it looks in sorry state and it is hoped that any long-mooted demolition can be avoided.

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