Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The
Editor
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F.Coakley , 2024
[From Isle of Man Examiner, 7th January 1927]
After having been a working miller for fifty-five years, a considerable proportion
of which period was spent to the employ of possibly the largest flour manufacturing
firm of its period, Mr Joseph B. Keig has come to the conclusion tltat the most
elaborate and costly modern machinery cannot yield results equal to those obtained
from the old-fashioned grinding stones. They may turn out the stuff more rapidly,
they may reach an intenser degree of fineness , but they do not produce an article
so pleasant in flavour and so wholesome for the stomach.
Mr Keig is also a disciple of Sir William Arbuthnot Lane and other eminent medical men, who are preaching the doctrine with insistence and persistence that the nation will sooner or later be impelled, for the sake of its own health, to eat bread baked from flour milled from the complete grain of the wheat berry'the "whole meal"'and not flour in which the germ of the wheal has been devitalised and destroyed.
And Mr Keig's opinion is entitled to some little respect. He is a miller bred and born, following the trade which his father practised before him, and imbued with a love of his craft which amounts to a positive passion. He is a splendid craftsman, as innumerable customers of his in both the North and the South of Island will testify.
He got his education in England, and for a considerable time held a responsible position with the great firm of Leetham's, of York; he has added to his experience in Ireland and in America, and is still managing, through his son, a milling business m Ireland. He returned to his native island twenty-five years ago, and for many years ran the Lhen Mill, Andreas, and when he moved into the historic mill at Milntown, Lezayre, he installed roller mills of the most modern pattern, and produced wheaten flour of the accepted type, as white as any man's. When, three years ago, he came to the Nunnery Mill, Douglas, leaving the milntown mill to be run by his brother, he came to a mill in which roller mills had been installed by his predecssors. Nevertheless Mr Keig, with all his knowledge of and skill in both systems, very deliberately decided to go in for stone-grinding.
Apart for the moment from the question of the desirability of milling the whole meal, Mr Keig is convinced that stone-ground flour is more nutritious than that ground by roller mills. The difference is very hard to define, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. There is, so Mr Keig claims, an action about the mechanical process which, possibly by setting up too fierce a heat, takes something important out of the very life of the grain, and leaves it the poorer for human food. This is a subject upon which much controversy has taken place, but Mr Keig's view is held quite widely.
Mr Keig's other view, that wholemeal is better than too "pure" a meal, has he support not only of "The Daily-Mail," but of that wonderful master of men, Mussolini. The Italian demigod has had a law enacted compelling the production of a certain proportion of flour containing the whole meal. Some of the coarser particles within the berry, which are removed by the processes of being sieved apart and fanned away, have a definite food value which, medical testimony is beginning to declare, it is foolish to despise. The fine white meal does indeed contain nothing but the very kernel of the wheat, but the human system is not intended for the reception of that kernel unmixed.
The roller mill, Mr Keig admits, can make good-grade flour out of inferior wheat, but then he does not intend to mill inferior wheat. And although the stone-grinding method may be considered old-fashioned , the actual stones used in the Nunnery Mill are as modern of their kind, and as carefully selected, as is possible. They are made of French burr stone, the best and most expensive material known to millers. The dressing of millstones is an art, over which the skilful miller lingers lovingly, and which is not to be picked up in a few months. The hand must be educated, must growup in companionship with the millstones, as the whole body and mind of the youth grows up.
The surface of the stones is grooved, the actual design of the grooving varying with different pairs of stones, according to the fineness of grinding which is required, and the grooving on each stone in a pair differs from the other, so that the two can work together in a pattern. Printers in two colours, for example, will appreciate this, and will understand the exactness which must be achieved in each individual of the pair. This intertwining ensures that the grain passing between the two stones is caught in one groove and then the other, and is ground finer and ever finer. At their outer edge the stones absolutely touch, further inward they lie a thirty-second part of an inch apart, and at the centre an eighth of an inch. The grain enters at the centre, and is first bruised and then ground and passed out by the shoot.
The process which convey the grain in and out of the stones, and which set the stones going and determine the rapidity of their movement, are of course mechanical. In the Nunnery Mill the power is obtained from an immense waterwheel, the largest and strongest in the Island, with a huge diameter, and built of steel all through.
Mr Keig manufactures, besides wholemeal flour, a coarser graulated wheatmeal, which makes exceedingly palatable and nutritious porridge and paddings. He is open, of course, to produce flour of the ordinary type to meet the demands of specific customers; and there are many farmers yet who grow a little wheat, not for sale but for household consumption, and have had it ground by Mr Keig at Milntown or the Lhen with mutual satisfaction.
He also does the usual work of grinding for farmers, and he produces an excellent quality of oatmeal, while he specialises in maize meal "Golden Drop," as it has been christened, for the use, not of animals, but human beings. In America, Indian corn is not despised as a food, and in Ireland it also has a great vogue; Mr Keig has produced considerable quantities of it for household consumption in Ireland. It makes delicious paddings, and also it bakes quite well, and is much in demand for cakes, scones, etc.
Mr Keig has also purchased a modern plant for the manufacture of pearl barley, which he proposes to operate later. He is also agent for various makes of feeding cakes, fish meals, etc.; and let us hasten to add that he does not store them in the same warehouse as his flour. Your wheatmeal or oatmeal will not taste or smell fishy. The premises are large and roomy, with plenty of accommodation in separate floors and buildings.
Mr Keig takes a pride in his selfacting kilns for drying oatmeal. Drying under this process is much cleaner and more expeditions than under the older method. It should be added that all the grain milled by him is thoroughly scoured before it is ready to be ground, and that it is not touched at any stage by the human hand.
The institution of the Nunnery Mill, though not the actual building, is undoubtedly of great antiquity. Documentary references to the mill and to the estate on which it stands, are not so frequent or so explicit as could be desired, but there is a considerable body of archaeological opinion to the effect that the nunnery at Douglas, though dedicated to St. Bridget, was under the jurisdicton of the Cistercian monks at Rushen Abbey and at Furness. Support for this view is lent by a document examined only a few days ago, which notes that the Bishop of Sodor had in 1414, after inquiry, adjudged the "monastery" at Douglas to be a monastery of the Cistercian order, and that it was founded by King Reginald, who died in 1226. The monks of Rushen Abbey actually removed to Douglas in 1192, and remained there for four years, and it is considered probable that they actually built the nunnery during that period. King Reginald came to the throne in 1187. The institution was , of course, a "nunnery"; it was occupied by female religieuses and was governed by a prioress.
The Cistercian monks were pioneers in the methodical cultivation of land, and a mill was doubtless worked at the Nunnery under the ecclesiastical regime, as a means of supply to the prioress and her nuns, and also as a source of actual revenue, for the Abbey tenants, and the inhabitants of Douglas generally, were for long enough after compelled to render tributes and services to the proprietors of the Nunnery estate, which included the bringing of their corn to be ground at the mill. The student is on firmer ground in 1607, when John Christian is definitely recorded as a tenant of the "milne" in the abbeylands of Braddan (including Onchan). This entry, however, may refer to the mill in the Abbey Lands district of Onchan. The Abbey lands had at that time been appropriated by the English Crown, and two years later they were granted to the Stanleys.
The Christians were connected by relationship with the Calcotts, who somewhere at that time became tenants under the Lord of Man of the Nunnery estate. A famous lawsuit occurred in 1681-2 when Mrs Margaret Christian, sister of the late Robert Calcott, contested a will in which he had bequeathed, among other things, the tithe of the Nunnery estate to his natural son Ewan. In 1645, when the seventh Earl of Derby constrained the Manx landowners to take leases of their estates for the period of three lives, Robert Calcott, who was one of the Earl's officers, compounded upon those terms for the occupancy of the Nunnery estate, and of the mill. The Calcotts probable had some association with the Nunnery very much earlier, for in 1511 Robert Calcott, as well as the Prioress of Douglas, paid rent to the Lord for the fishing rights at the Nunnery. The Calcott of the seventh Earl's period is credited in the celebrated ballad lamenting the execution of "Illiam Dhone" with being at feud with the martyred Christian, and with having helped to procure his death. The minstrel heaps a curse on the "Clan Colcad," and prophesies that the name will ere long be extinct from the land; and it will be noted that twenty after the execution of "Illiam Dhone," the inheritance of Calcott's estate was being disputed between his sister and his illegitimate son.
The Nunnery passed into the hands of a succession of Heywoods and Goldies and Taubmans, and is now held, mill and all, by the descendant of the united families of Goldie and Taubman. The present mill buildings are believed to be two or three centuries old, although they have undergone considerable modifications and enlargements; and traces of the site of earlier mill are shown beside the stream just above the present structure.
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Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The
Editor |
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