Ian Petchy’s book for The River Gipping Trust (reviewed in Issue 231): Ipswich to Stowmarket Navigation: John Rennie's First Canal Project threw up an interesting tale of the watermill at Baylham. 

This, the only complete watermill on the River Gipping is Grade II listed. It is of early 19th century construction and three storeys high with storage bins in the 4th attic storey. The mill was still being used to grind corn in the early 1960s. The building and surrounding land was part of the Shrubland Estate; the mill was put up for sale in September 1941. The mill and land were purchased by Ernest Norman Onians using money he made from selling ‘Tottenham Pudding’ – pig swill from waste food, made from leftovers collected from the back door of London restaurants, all said to have been brought by river barges and processed at Baylham Mill. This earned him the title of ‘The Pudding King’. So far, so slightly queasy.

However, during the 1940s and 1950s, Onians started buying objects at country house sales (often due to the imposition of death duties from the 1930s, causing sell-offs of stately homes and estates). After his wife Daphne, a former model, died in 1983, he became a virtual recluse surrounded by hundreds of paintings, items of furniture, clocks and china ware. He continued collecting until his death in 1994. The locals thought it was junk, as did the people who carried out three robberies at his home over the years but took only cash. 

Eventually, the collection comprised 1,000 items including 500 canvasses, described as ‘the art find of the century’ by The Evening Star. One of those items was a painting bought for £12 in the 1940s. When authenticated some 50 years later as a lost Poussin masterpiece, some art experts valued it at £12 million. Sotheby’s valued it at £15,000, but it sold for £155,000. After it was cleaned and restored experts at the Louvre in Paris confirmed it as a 1626 Poussin which had disappeared 350 years earlier.

The Rothschild Foundation bought this Poussin masterpiece: The destruction and sack of Jerusalem in 1998 for £4.5 million. Executors for the Onians family sought compensation and sued Sotheby’s for £4.5 million, with an out-of-court settlement said to be a six-figure sum paid by the auction house some years later.

Many will know Baylham Mill because they will have passed it on their way to Baylham Rare Breeds Centre.

R.G.

Below: Baylham Mill photographed in 2018; it has since had some exterior renovation. The doorway at the lower left features two eerie carved faces.

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