Holme Mills

Built on an ancient site in the old hamlet of ‘Holm’ (the name is Danish in origin), together with ‘Stratton’ and ‘Biggleswade’ at the time of the Domesday Book made up what is now the Parish of Biggleswade.

There has been a mill at Holme for over a thousand years and it has been in the charge of the Jordan family for 133 years. After a fire in 1894, the flour mill was modernised, with a 25 horse-power water wheel and a 20 horse-power oil engine to drive the Carter’s roller system, still in use today. Out of over 400 mills in Bedfordshire in 1855 only Jordan’s Mill remains to produce wholemeal flour.

Today, after having survived several more fires, the mill, together with a cattle feed plant combines with breakfast cereals and crunchy bars sold nationally, to make up a thriving business on the banks of the river Ivel. The old lock can still be identified, where the ‘Ivel Navigation’ extension to Shefford was routed at the end of the ‘Canal Age’ only to close in 1876.