DescriptionCarew Tide Mill, otherwise known as The French Mill is a stately nineteenth century corn mill set on a causeway or dam across a tidal creek below Carew Castle (NPRN 92709). A mill is mentioned in 1541 and the causeway and its floodgates in 1615. It is likely that this arrangement was intended to provide both a millpond and an ornamental lake, part of the contrived garden landscape about the castle in the late medieval and Tudor period (NPRN 301206). The causeway was used as a wharf at high tide.
The present mill building has three storeys with attics, and the walls are of rendered stone with some red brick dressings, under a slate roof. Two undershot wheels, one restored by 1998, drove six pairs of stones, powered by the 3.3m head of water.
The causeway is roughly 150m long, tapering from about 13m at the south end where it supports the mill, to 4.5m at the north end. It is stone faced with a clay core. There are floodgates at the centre and a spillway at the north end.
Source: CADW Listed Buildings Database (6038)
John Wiles, RCAHMW, 14.01.08