Toovey's Mill Kings Langley

Evidence indicates there was a mill on the site at the time of the Domesday survey of 1086. In 1763 the mill was sold to John Surrey. He died in 1770 and left the mill to his only daughter, Esther, who married her cousin Thomas Toovey in 1778. Their son Thomas inherited the mill in 1830.  Nicholas King, Esther’s ancestor on her mother’s side acquired the mill on lease from Queen Elizabeth I in 1587.

In 1797 the Grand Junction Canal was cut right by the mill augmenting the river Gade and providing a new means of transport. Following a dispute over water rights, the canal company bought the mill in 1846 and Thomas Toovey leased it back from them. On his death in 1847, William Archibald Toovey succeeded him and some years before his death in 1898 made the mill over to his son William Toovey.

In 1894, he installed a steam engine and a new steel roller mill and the gradual reduction of flour milling began. In 1914 the plant was producing 8 x 280lb sacks per hour, packed mostly in 140lb bags for sale.

“Golden Spray” Was their top grade flour, and in 1922 a canal boat registered in the name of TW Toovey carried that name. Toovey’s also had two horse-drawn wide boats, 11 ft beam “Langley” and “Betty” who brought sacked wheat from Brentford to the mill.

In 1913 Foden steam lorries replaced the 30 or so horses and the wagons used to make deliveries. A new 150hp Woodhouse and Mitchell steam engine run by two Lancashire boilers was installed in 1916 and ran until 1956.

The old iron breast waterwheel, about 12ft diameter was removed in 1921 and replaced by two Swiss turbines, one of which continued to drive an electric generator until 1978.

Lewis Dean joined his uncle in 1922 and ran the mill after Thomas Toovey’s retirement in 1928. In 1936 a six storey grain silo (1,000 tons capacity) was erected, releasing space used for storage in sacks for the expansion of the production of animal feedstuffs started in 1931.

Flour milling ceased in January1939 due to competition and the company name changed to Kings Langley Mills Ltd.

By 1946, the mill was in poor condition and the canal company would not spend money on it. Lewis Dean bought it back at a price considerably less than his great grandfather had sold it 100 years before.

In 1960 modern plant was brought in for mechanised handling and packing. In 1969 to meet growing demand a bulk delivery service of feeding stuff started. In 1968 Lewis Dean’s son Richard Toovey Dean became joint managing director. The company went into voluntary liquidation in 1978. The machinery was sold by auction and the mill was demolished but the mill house was retained and the whole site redeveloped for residential use.

From Corn Mills in Dacorum by Peter Ward in Hertfordshire’s Past Autumn 1990, also the History of Kings Langley Mill by Lewis Dean, J. of the Watford & Dist. Ind. Hist Soc. No.1, 1971

Reproduced by kind permission of Peter Ward.

In 1983 Lewis Dean gave a detailed talk (now archived) to this Society describing the history of the mill, methods of flour production. In this short extract he describes early documentary references of its development.