At Marlow Place for the recent Heritage Open Day I was asked what constitutes a “Marlovian”.

The general consensus has always been a 40-year residency in the town, but as far as I am concerned anyone who lives here, no matter how long, intends to carry on living here, who loves the place and is anxious to preserve its unique flavour could assume that prestigious title.

Anyway, a visitor to Marlow Place who has only been a resident for 10 years, and said he was not a “Marlovian”, was anxious to find out a bit about the old mill and wanted to know if I had pictures.

The mill stood alongside the lock and served many purposes in its 200-plus year lifespan, but ended up in the 1900s making paper, and lastly as a storage depot for J Lyons the caterers and owners of the famous Lyons Corner Houses in London.

I had an uncle who, up to the early 1960s, rented a small outhouse for his profession as a marquetry specialist, but also acted as a mill caretaker.

Visiting him one day in my schooldays I was allowed to poke around the various wooden buildings which by then were in a poor state of repair and home to more than a few rats.

Opening one door I was intrigued to find a whole room filled with five-feet-high fibreglass ice cream cones, obviously originally standing outside Lyons’ various cafés.

However, as regards pictures, the top one, downstream from the lock, is relatively new in my collection and is one of the clearest I have seen. Colourised, as opposed to being a colour photo, the original thin spire visible on the distant church would date it as pre-1897. The lock with the first lock-keeper’s house is on the left and two millstreams are clearly visible, only one remaining now under the award-winning Marlow Mill Apartments (small picture inset) which replaced the derelict mill in the 1960s.

Below is a 1950s view from the other side, taken from the lock footbridge.

From a similar date the marvellous aerial view shows the whole site. ‘Three Gables’ on the right, although now renamed, is one of only two buildings still in place, the other being Thames Cottage adjoining the lock.

On the bottom line of pictures are two postcard views, and finally a modern day scene – the mill pond and Marlow Mill Apartments looking from the footbridge.

The boathouse remains above the water, although nicely converted into a day-room. If you stand on the footbridge and look to the far left of the mill pond you can see the apparatus that controls the remaining mill stream which flows under the buildings.      

There is no room here for a résumé of all of the mill’s activities, and, as I often point out, I am just a collector of pictures rather than a historian. However, for anyone interested I recommend trying to beg, borrow or steal The Watermills of Buckinghamshire by Stanley Freese.

Contact Michael at michael@jazzfans.co or 01628 486571.