Denver Mill in the West Norfolk fens is such a wonderful setting for a coffee shop. It is also a working flour mill producing all its own flour, which is used to produce bread and cakes on the premises. The mill, which was built in 1835, is now run by Mark Abel, his wife Lindsay and their son Paul who is a millwright (the mill is currently being restored and should be in full working order by the end of 2009). The Abel family took over the mill on a five-year lease in June 2008 from Norfolk Historic Buildings Trust (it was given as a gift to the people of Norfolk in 1971).

Denver Mill, Norfolk, UK

The working mill is a wonderful example of preserving Norfolk heritage with a fascinating history. The windmill was joined by a steam-powered mill around 1860 to help with increased flour production. As technology progressed, a Blackstone 45hp oil engine was added in the 1930s to continue flour production, and the windmill was then used as an animal feed mill. This engine is a single cylinder horizontal crank oil engine, designed to run on heavy fuel oil or diesel oil. The engine ran from 1932 until 1969 for six days a week – during the war it ran for seven days a week.

The Blackstone engine

The windmill stopped production in 1941 following a lightning strike and during the Second World War its workshops were used for various engineering projects ranging from church organ repairs to agricultural engineering and also secret government work.

Denver Mill from the carpark

The complex includes the bakery (producing bread and cakes from home-milled flour), a tea room, holiday accommodation in the old Miller’s House and also some craft units. The concept behind the attraction is not to make money but to educate visitors in how a traditional mill operates and to show them the workings and the end product – traditionally baked bread.

The bakery can produce around 100 loaves a day; this is enough to sell to a small loyal band of customers and also to supply the coffee shop.

Tea Room entrance

The Denver Mill tea room uses this fresh bread to produce the most sumptuous freshly made sandwiches. During Winter 2009 the bakery is to be moved into a larger area at Denver to allow more capacity.

BestCuppa asked Mark and Lindsay about their venture.

Why a mill in Norfolk?

We were looking to set up a mill wrighting yard for our son and Denver Mill seemed to offer us a wonderful opportunity to restore the mill and set up a holiday cottage and bakery/coffee shop business as well… it’s taken a year to get it ready to promote and now we think we are ready.

What is the philosophy behind the coffee shop and bakery?

We use fresh local ingredients as much as we can… our cheese and eggs come from Norfolk which is such a wonderfully diverse county for food. We produce artisan bread using our own flour and I think people appreciate more that the food we provide is top quality and produced in the local area… we make bread with pride rather than to meet targets.

Comfy seating area inside tea room

What other projects have you got on at the moment?

We are starting the ‘Upper Crust Bakers Club’, which will provide an exchange of ideas between bakers, farmers and other interested parties about traditional bread and flour. One of the latest ideas to emerge from this is about wholemeal bread (bran and semolina are waste products that would normally go to animal feed). If one can think back, VitBe bread (no longer available) was very high in bran (twice as much bran) and because we produce a great deal of semolina and bran in dressing the grain to produce flour we had an idea that we might provide VitBe type pre-mixes for use in bread machines as people seem to be nostalgic for this type of bread.

Outside seating area

In addition we are running a competition – looking for ideas and recipes to use bran and semolina and have launched a competition called ‘a load of ole squit’ where we ask for recipes and will publish the best ones in a book.

What is the prize for the competition?

The prize for the best recipe will be a weekend break for two at the mill holiday cottages – worth £350. The winners will also take part in our new activity offering called ‘From Plough to Plate’ where they will harvest their own wheat, dress the grain, mill the grain into flour and then bake their own bread to take away.

Courtyard area with outdoor seating

What future plans do you have?

We want to make the mill and the bakery sustainable – we don’t really want it to get too crowded and are not interested in making immense profits but are more interested in getting the message over and educating visitors about windmills and traditional methods of flour milling and baking.

Denver Mill visitor shop

Denver Mill is well worth a visit. It is about 35 minutes from Ely, Cambridgeshire, on Sluice Road just off the A10 towards Kings Lynn. If Mark is there he will happily give you a personal tour of the windmill and the steam and diesel powered mills. You can also get a fabulous sandwich or cake and coffee and it’s not expensive. Highly recommended!