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Woollen Mill Llanvithyn

The woollen mill at Llanvithyn forms part of a much older milling tradition associated with the medieval grange of Llanvithyn.

Documentary evidence records that by 1336 there were two mills at Llanvithyn, valued at £2 a year, and in 1519 the mills and the wider grange were leased to Sir John Raglan. Llanvithyn itself had earlier been associated with the Cistercian Abbey of Margam, which established a grange here. The mills were therefore part of a landscape in which water power had been exploited for centuries.

The particular building now called The Old Bakehouse was the later Llanvithyn Woollen Mill, also referred to locally as the Factory. It retained its mill race and sluice, and 19th-century Ordnance Survey mapping shows it as a linear range with an adjoining outbuilding. By the time of the second edition OS map it was described as disused, and the site subsequently underwent several changes of use.

 In 1822, Thomas Jenkins mortgaged Little Mill and other property; the deed described a “newly built Messuage or Dwelling House & Woollen manufactory” on part of the tenement known as Little Mill or Lanvithin Vach. The manufactory was evidently intended to process wool locally and was later known simply as “The Factory”. It subsequently became a bakehouse in the early 20th century, before being converted to domestic use in the 1950s and acquiring its present name, The Old Bakehouse.

There is also evidence that the mill was involved in flannel and woollen production, rather than simply grinding corn. Local recollections recorded by the Llancarfan Society refer to The Factory as having formerly been a flannel mill, while the surviving mill race provides physical evidence of the water-powered industrial process.

So, although the present building is a domestic property, the site represents an interesting survival of Llancarfan's small-scale rural textile industry. It links the medieval exploitation of water power at Llanvithyn with the development of a more recognisable woollen manufactory in the early 19th century, when local sheep's wool could be spun, processed and woven into products such as flannel and blankets. The transition from medieval mill → woollen factory → bakehouse → dwelling is a particularly good illustration of how buildings in the Llancarfan valley have repeatedly been adapted to changing economic circumstances.