Off a country lane and past a picture perfect cottage, the noise of the mill booms through the latched oak doors.
Stepping inside, the din grows, a smell of fresh flour fills the air and the sunlight disappears where the windows have been covered to preserve the grain in the darkness.
The miller emerges from the dark, hopping across sacks of flour to the front door.
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Karl Grevatt is not what you’d expect. Aged just 32, this former art student is the 18th miller on the site since 1728, running Warwickshire’s last operating water mill (supported by a team of volunteers) with exactly the same methods used in centuries gone by.
“People expect a dusty miller, usually of retirement age,” says Karl, “and a lot of people are surprised to find out I run a mill but I saw this place as an amazing opportunity.”
Taking over Charlecote Mill in Hampton Lucy two years ago, Karl is turning the heritage building into a self-sufficient commercial enterprise.
Born in north London, Karl found himself working in a high street clothes shop after A-levels and a brief stint at art college. But when he was made redundant he decided to take a completely new direction.
He says: “My partner found an advert in the paper looking for a labourer to work on historic buildings and said ‘You could do that!’
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“I’ve always had a passion for older buildings and that got me the job.
“I worked my way up through the company, they sent me to college to do carpentry and I got to the stage where I was looking after building sites.”
He went on to become a fellow of the William Morris Craft Fellowship with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), seeing him travel the country picking up different traditional skills such as blacksmithing, thatching and stained glasswork.
At Buckinghamshire’s Brill Windmill he picked up the milling bug and went on to look for work with other mills.
Coming to Charlecote, Karl met miller John Bedington, who was planning his retirement, and Karl leapt at the opportunity to take the reins.
“I walked in here and it was just like stepping back in time,” he recalls. “It’s extraordinary.
“There’s something about a working building that gets under your skin. It’s alive and you have to respect it.”
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The building was constructed more than 200 years ago, on the site of an earlier mill, and continues a long tradition in Hampton Lucy, with the Domesday book of 1086 mentioning a mill in the village.
From the flagstoned ground floor, Karl climbs a flight of wooden steps.
Upstairs a series of giant wooden cogs and leather belts are being turned by the noisy water wheel below and a fine curtain of cobwebs hangs in every corner.
The only giveaway that it’s 2014, other than the miller himself, are a set of light switches and some scattered laminated information signs for visitors.
A swathe of 海角视频 mills went out of use in the 1930s and 40s, but Charlecote’s kept going, grinding animal feed.
In the late 1970s, after the building had stood derelict for 15 years, John was invited to see if he could get it running again.
Today, while the fully functioning mill is working away, the pond outside is basking in sunshine, tickled by a weeping willow.
Blue dragonflies skim across nettles and lilies while water is pushed around the pond by the wheel.
When John retired the mill was likely to be taken over by a trust and turned into a tourist attraction, but Karl was determined to keep it running as it has done for the last two centuries.
“I thought turning into a tourist attraction would be a crying shame when it could be run commercially and it has a ready made customer base,” he says.
On the ground floor he mans what he calls his “dashboard”. On one wall are the miller’s three controls: the feed into the stones, the gap between the stones and the sluice – the gate which controls how much water goes into the water wheel.
It amounts to a switch, a lever and a feed with flour flowing down from above.
Karl has placed two large sacks under the feed and must quickly replace them as soon as they are full.
A 10-ton delivery of grain from local farms arrives every eight to 10 weeks. And, unlike a modern mill, Karl can adjust and tailor the texture of the flour to individual bakers.
His arms, hair and eyelashes covered in a fine dusting of flour, he says: “There used to be over 10,000 mills in the country but we’re now down to about 50 that can still operate, and just a handful that are running commercially.
“This is the last working water mill in Warwickshire now, after Wellesbourne closed recently.”
But is it really profitable in the 21st century to run a water mill?
“It’s getting there!” he laughs. “It needed a bit of energy but it’s certainly improving.
“Last year was a bad year for grain. Prices were going up and quality was going down. This year, things have picked up.”
Karl sells his flour directly to buyers, delivering three evenings each week to a handful of local bakers and 600 individual families across Warwickshire.
The heart of his business is in Coventry where his flour is in demand from Asian families for homemade chapatis.
Because the flour is stone ground it doesn’t burn, giving the freshly-baked breads a better flavour, and a large sack of flour can last a family from one to two months.
He also supplies artisan bakers Knead It in Stratford, Crustum in Kenilworth, and in Leamington, Bread for Life and Haddie and Trilby. His dream is to open a small bakery on site.
“It’s a very physical job, lugging bags of flour and grain around,” he says, “You have to be quite nimble to be able to run the mill and the days can be long.
“But just being here is incredible. It’s the best office in the world.
“Like anywhere, you can become blasé about it but as soon as you take people around and see their faces it reminds you how special this place is.”
He adds: “Hopefully at some point I can train someone in the same way John trained me, and if I can pass the building down to the next generation in the same state, or better, I’ll be a happy man.”
* On the second Sunday of each month the mill is open for visitors with guided tours and homemade tea and cakes. Visit on September 14 or October 12. It will also be open on August 25 (Bank Holiday Monday). Keep up to date with the mill via Twitter @charlecotemill or search for “Charlecote Mill” on Facebook