Kings Mill for sale
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So the Council are now looking to sell off Kings Mill – yet again an asset that they had £100’s of grant funding from the Lottery and lots of other places yet it has a guide price of only £165k. What a disgrace and an example of gross mismanagement. Why has it not been offered to the community. A few years ago I attended a meeting called by local Councillors about taking it on for community use but ideas rejected by the Council.
The Council should have a rethink and offer first to see if there are any groups that would want to take it on.On the one hand the Council are spending money trying to attract visitors to the town and on the other they are selling off a potential visitor attraction! Wonder if the Council have approached the National Trust, they have adjoining land, and would be real custodians.The Erddig estate did own it at one point. This building is in a prime position on one of the entrance roads to the town.
It’s the same everywhere along the Clywedog Trail with Nant Mill, Minera Lead Mines, Bersham Ironworks and Kings Mill. The grant money was brilliant for doing them up in the 90s, but it doesn’t exactly pay the wages of rangers 10 years down the line, or when a recession turns up.
Minera Lead Mines and Bersham have stopped their tours long ago and are getting overgrown, with operation of the former now undertaken by Groundwork, Kings Mill has been closed for years and used to store excess items from the Welch Fusiliers museum in Caernarfon, it seems Nant mill might be the only one to remain at this rate.
Hi Jane. We are a not for profit community group who have been trying to acquire Kings Mills for over three years. We have a detailed and costed plan to bring back the Mill to community use which has been approved by the council. They have blocked use at all stages although we have the support of the community councils adjoining the Mill. The mill has a covenant for community use which they have spent the last 12 month’s trying to remove. It was gifted to them by the National Trust and does not meet current energy standards.
The question I ask is, have Councilors any say in what is put up for sale or is it just the decision of full time officers?
The trouble with Kings Mill is that as mills go it is not exactly a great example. It doesn’t contain the original equipment and objects that you normally find in historic mills that are open to the public such as Stretton Water Mill in Cheshire and Melin Llynnon on Anglesey. No grinding stones, no chance to see flour being ground or bread being made, in attractive surroundings. Who wants to read on a board what happens in a mill, if you can travel twenty miles and actually see it happening. It may be on the way into Wrexham, but the nearby car park is also well-known, as one of Wrexham’s outdoor ‘entertainment’ venues. There was talk of a Caia Park heritage group taking it over, but there has been nothing about it in the media or online, let alone on Wrexham.com so that might explain why it is now up for sale.
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