RootsChat.Com

Hello my first visit to this site.   I was visiting my mother and grandmother in Chelmsford Essex UK yeserday and my 105 year old grandmother was talking about her time in Stebbing Mill. Her mother was a Hynds and she spent many summers working at the mill with her mother making butter etc and selling it at the door. She was remembering about the bucket and chuck it toilet they had in the garden and how they had to grow rubarbh around it then eat the stuff in pies. My mother also used to spend her summer holidays there sleeping in a bed with her sister, and remembering how scary it was in the creaky old mill. my mother and her cousins are going back there in the spring. My mother happened to mention to her mum that her cousins thought the mill might be haunted. My grandmother imediatly said yes it is but never told you as did not want to scare you. Aparntly it is an old lady who looks fro one of the mill windows. How ever my grandmother remebers her mother saying that one evening whilst they all sat in the kitchen a jar of cooling cooking fat flew off the window sill and smashed on the other side of the kitchen. Nan says she had happy times at the mill but lots of marriages breaking up with wifes going off with brotherinlaws and the like. Edward Hynds her grandfather ws also a bell ringer at the church and there are records of this. My mother has photo of Edward and Sarah Hynds and other family members at the mill on her living room wall.