First recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, The Old Mill at Lower Slaughter, England stands beside a restful millpond, its brick and stone walls bearing the quiet dignity of centuries. Once powered by the River Eye and later by coal-fired steam, the mill produced flour until 1958, when Joseph Morris Wilkins—the last in a four-generation line of millers—passed away. Since then, the water wheel rests idle, the chimney long cold, both energy systems obsolete in making flour.
Beneath a bright sky, this former site of agrarian industry now offers stillness instead of motion. The Mill Sleeps reflects on how places built for work outlast the work itself. Though the noise of lapping water, steam engines and grinding stones has faded, the mill endures as a quiet monument to family enterprise, evolving energy systems, and the passage of time. Here, obsolescence doesn’t mean disappearance—but a different kind of presence.