Pakenham Water Mill near Bury St Edmunds welcomes head miller from Virginia

Suffolk’s oldest watermill welcomed a visitor last week who had flown all the way from America.

Cory Welshans, head miller at the George Washington Watermill in Virginia, was on holiday in England with his wife and was keen to see the Pakenham Water Mill, near Bury St Edmunds, which is similar in age to their mill in Mount Vernon.

George Washington owned a large estate in Virginia long before he became America's first president and prospered as a tobacco planter, before changing to wheat and corn milling.

He built his mill in 1771, about the same time as the present Pakenham mill building which replaced much earlier ones.

Peter Stobbart, head miller at the Pakenham Water Mill, had a lot to talk about with his American counterpart, particularly the similarities in machinery and milling techniques.

Other similarities included traditional devices like the bell which alerts the miller if the flow of wheat stops.

Although the Pakenham mill doesn’t have a whiskey distillery nearby like the mill in Mount Vernon, visitors can see the vat in the back kitchen where millers in the past would have brewed their own beer.