Bodior Tide Mill

Cadw's description

Summary description and reason for designation

The following provides a general description of the Scheduled Monument.

The monument consists of a well preserved early tide mill, a type of watermill powered by retaining seawater at high tide and then releasing it at low tide via the water wheel. The tide was an important source of power for grinding corn from the early modern period until well into the industrial revolution, used in islands and peninsulas with insufficient drainage for conventional water mills. In Anglesey, tide mills were of importance to the local economy from the sixteenth century. Bodior Mill (or Ty'n y Felin) may well date from this period, although the only documentary reference to it is in 1778. It includes a stone dam holding back a tidal creek, a sluice channel and a rock-cut channel at the south-eastern end which would have contained the mill wheel and the mill platform itself.

The monument is of national importance as a rare and well-preserved example of an early tide mill site and for its potential to enhance our knowledge of 16th to 19th century industrial practices. It retains significant archaeological potential, with a strong probability of the presence of associated archaeological features and deposits. The structure itself may be expected to contain archaeological information concerning chronology and building techniques.

The scheduled area comprises the remains described and areas around them (excluding the modern sluice gate) within which related evidence may be expected to survive.