Aberdaron: £1m bid to restart work at 13th Century flour mill

The hope is to create flour in the mill and use it in the bakery across the road

For hundreds of years, islanders off the Llyn Peninsula baked fresh bread from sacks of freshly ground flour transported from the mainland.

But after the last miller died in the 1950s, the Melin Daron, in Aberdaron, Gwynedd, closed and fell to disrepair.

Now there are hopes local grains will be turned into bread again, as work begins to restore the 13th Century mill to its former glory.

A local baker hopes to raise £1m to turn it into a tourist attraction.

Geraint Jones, who owns Becws Islyn bakery in the village, has transferred the mill to a community group in the hope it can be grinding grains again by 2023.

Mr Jones said: "It could easily have been turned into anything, but we wanted to keep the history of Aberdaron as it was.

"The plan is hopefully we can grow our own wheat, we can grind it here and bake it in the bakery."

Mentioned in historical documents dating back to 1252, Melin Daron was one of five mills owned by the Abbey on Bardsey Island.

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At that time, grain was transported from the island to be ground and the flour then carried back to Bardsey.

When the mill closed in the 1950s the building fell into disrepair, with the outer shell - dating back to the 19th Century - deteriorating.

The building has deteriorated but the machinery inside is still intact

Project director Roy Milnes said the group had managed to attract enough funding to safeguard the mill over the winter before work could begin to turn it into a tourist and education facility.

"It's a valuable asset and Grade II listed building - we want to develop this area of the village to bring more people in out of season," he said

"Most of the mills in the area have been stripped out, but this mill is complete, worn out but complete, and so it's restorable."

Mr Milnes said the hope was to teach school children how to make bread, and to bring more tourists into the village out of season.

"There's a whole language associated with milling that has gone with the past, we want to bring all of that back and get people familiar with the operation of the mill - and hopefully end up with bread," he said.

The group, which is applying for grants, hopes to start work transforming the mill next year and open within two years.