8 Mill Lane Clophill

8 Mill Lane in 1981 [Z50/31/96]

8 Mill Lane is an attractive half-timbered and thatched cottage. It has undergone some significant external changes in the last thirty years as the photographs at the head and foot of this page testify. Bedfordshire's Historic Environment Record is now on-line as part of the Heritage Gateway website. It says of 8 Mill Lane [HER 13109]: "A timber framed 18th century cottage. It is rendered with a thatched roof. There is a slightly later extension to the west, which is also timber framed with stone decoration on the lower half. The ground floor part of the extension creates the porch".

The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed as to its rateable value. Clophill was assessed in 1927. The valuer visiting 8 Mill Lane noted that it was owned by A. E. Sanders and occupied by J. Lee who paid £8 per annum in rent, having paid £7/16/- before the Great War [DV1/C/46/134].

The brick, stucco, timber and thatched detached property comprised a living room and kitchen, with a weather-boarded and tiled washhouse and two bedrooms in the roof. A weather-boarded and thatched earth closet and a weather-boarded and tiled barn stood outside.

8 Mill Lane July 2010