WEMBURY MILL RAVAGES... (My poem about what happened to Devon's Wembury Mill in 1824...)

 Wembury Mill Ravages…

The 

Ravages.

Wild storms, swirling sand

With dust and salt drifted onto the tongue.

Calluses were rough on the miller’s palms from

Hauling chains and hefting Hessian, yet he wrote

So carefully inside his bible

With God’s guiding, instructing hand, 

Of

Ravages…

Fields of corn

Slid from a farmstead

Away down rough, steep tracks

To a shingle shore, 

Edged by the rush of a stream,

Where the mill huddled

Beneath the church’s protection

And braced itself for a storm’s furore…

Lashes of wind

Ripped at the walls,

Grey of rough hewn stone,

To stifle the roar 

Dredged from the blasts of the sea,

Where salt water mixed

With the fresh from the land

And smashed against the bolted wooden mill door…

Waters then rose

Over the exposed building

Astray, washing down to the bed

To create an awe.

Wedged drift-timber and gravel scattered,

Windows were cracked

And ducks and fowl screeched, then drowned,

As the storm through Wembury’s cluttered mill-floors tore… 

Pete Ray

Written after my last visit to Wembury in October 2012…

 

Elisha Gullett worked as the miller at Wembury, Devon, in the 19^th Century and also served as a clerk to the vicar. 

Thus he wrote about a storm during November 1824, in his family bible.

When I acted as miller Joseph Briscoe, whilst 

teaching at Sarehole Mill in Birmingham, we devised a plan that the local vicar was teaching me to write, allowing me to complete labels on sacks and address the ledgers.

An amazing coincidence for me…