Painswick Stream

The Painswick Stream runs south through the valley just west of Painswick and on to the River Frome at Stroud. Small as it is, it powered the town's cloth trade: the Victoria County History counts 25 mills in the parish in 1820, 18 of them working cloth. Footpaths follow it past mill houses of the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, now homes.

History

The stream, called the Wick water in old records, forms part of the parish's western boundary and flows into the Frome, the river of Stroud's cloth valleys. Historic England's description of Painswick Beacon names it as one of three valleys the hill divides, with the River Twyer and the Wash Brook.

Cloth

Painswick's prosperity was built on cloth, and its mills stood along the stream one below another. In 1820 the parish had 25, and 18 of them were in the cloth trade. Brookhouse Mill had a dye house in 1820 and a steam engine by 1822; Painswick Mill made cloth in 1820, and King's Mill until about 1860. The trade fell away quickly from the 1840s, and by the early twentieth century most of the mills had stopped.

Pins, silk and corn

As cloth failed the mills found other work. Pin-making began in the parish in 1796, at first as work for the poor in the workhouse, and Brookhouse, King's, Cap and Painswick Mills all became pin mills later in the century; Brookhouse was still a pin works in 1972. Painswick Mill was worked by silk throwsters by 1863. Others turned to corn: Loveday's Mill, a maltings in 1820 and a corn mill by 1853, stopped in about 1914 and became a house in 1939, and Skinner's Mill ground cattle feed into the 1920s. Small's Mill turned out umbrella sticks in 1853 before it became a saw mill.

What to see

The mills are lived in, so they are seen from the path and the lane, but several are listed buildings and worth stopping for.

• Loveday's Mill, where the lane crosses the stream: a seventeenth-century miller's house set against a nineteenth-century mill
• Painswick Mill House, beside its mill pond: a large seventeenth-century house
• Skinners Mill, now two cottages, with origins in the fifteenth century or earlier
• Kingsmill: a mill and mill house of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries round three sides of a courtyard, where a footbridge crosses the mill race by its sluice gates

Look for the water works as well as the buildings: the mill pond beside Painswick Mill House, and at Kingsmill the race and its sluice gates.

Visiting

The stream is followed by public footpaths and lanes, open at all times and free. The paths cross fields with stiles and a stone squeeze stile, the ground by the water is muddy after rain, and the lanes back up to the town are steep, so wear boots and expect a climb. The mill houses are private: keep to the paths and do not go into their gardens or yards. Spring, when the valley woods come into leaf, and a dry autumn day are the best times.

Getting there

Start in Painswick. Park in the Stamages Lane car park (GL6 6UT) or take Stagecoach bus 66 from Stroud or Cheltenham, about hourly Monday to Saturday and every two hours on Sundays, and walk down Vicarage Street past the Quaker meeting house to the valley. A circuit down to Loveday's Mill, along the stream past Brookhouse Mill to Kingsmill and back up Knapp Lane to the churchyard makes a short loop from the town.

Nearby

Back at the top of the town are St Mary's Church, with its yews and table tombs, and the Court House, with its porch of 1604, and across New Street the Falcon Inn. North of the town the Iron Age ramparts of Painswick Beacon rise above the head of the valley.