Pulsing along to the rhythm of an electric generator, the ancient corn mill put on a fascinating show for wide-eyed residents walking through the different rooms.

The three-storey mill is open to the public for only one weekend a year, as part of the National Mills Weekend. This year’s event took place on Saturday (May 12) and the following day.

Elizabeth Sheen, owner of Kentraugh Mill in Colby, takes great delight in providing people this once in a year opportunity to explore the protected building.

’It’s me having fun,’ she said. ’My husband Reverend Canon John and I learn so much from people who are coming in to visit and it’s important to show them a piece of their heritage.

’One visitor told me that he had worked at the mill. A woman had also told us that she had been weighed as a baby in the weighing machine in the mill.’

The earliest record of when it was owned is the year 1506 by Robert Qualtrough.

Powered by a waterwheel at the time, the mill had to feed a ’tithe-pig’ to the property of the Lord of Mann every year.

The Qualtroughs continued to own the corn mill, which would grind oats and barley for porridge, oat cakes, flour and animal food, until it was sold to another miller named John Wood in 1904.

Mr Wood, from Ballabeg, worked the mill until it stopped for good in 1943.

It was later restored in 1969 by Elizabeth’s father, Mr RM Nuttall who installed an electric generator to bring the mill back to life.

Elizabeth shared how her father, who was from England, had stumbled across the old mill after making a blind purchase of the property.

She said: ’It was advertised as a house with a "garage".

’The two sisters who owned the house said "there’s the key and that is where the garage is, have a look".

’When he found it out to be a mill, he thought "right, we must preserve this!"

’He enlarged the little doorway and we did some repairs on it. "It’s got to be kept", he would say. All the local people came and helped, telling us "this is how it works and this is how you do it" to get it to move as it would have done.

’He arrived to the island in the 1950s and it took until 1969 to get the mill going,’ she explained.

In 1969, Mr Nuttall had written about the mill saying: ’No-one regrets more than myself that it has not proved practicable to restore waterpower to the mill. To renovate the wheel would necessitate its complete reconstruction, as all the wooden buckets have disappeared, the wooden axle is perished and so are the spokes.’ He listed other issues such as the walls of the dam being unable to hold water.

’However,’ he continued, ’the inside of the mill has been restored to its original condition and the machinery can now be seen running again, just as it has done for so many years.’

Due to Mr and Mrs Sheen’s efforts to preserve the building further, Kentraugh Mill is now one of the few remaining working mills in the island.

Donations were made in aid of UK charity United Society Partners in the Gospel.