Alan F Norris

The Miller Alan F Norris

It is 1798 and our story begins on an early day in autumn after some of the wettest summer days on record. Admiral Nelson is at last beginning to win the war at sea against the French and life in the English countryside should be good. But it isn't. In a quiet Devonshire valley a family lives and works peacefully at their flour milling business. On the hill above their small cottage stands a windmill, a robust tower that is the heart of their business. It is old, built nearly a hundred years ago, but in the hands of the master miller it produces flour that is famous for its quality throughout the south of the England. Not very far away to the West, is the busy, bustling River Tamar, an important trader's waterway and the ancient border between Britain and Cornwall. To the North of the Mill, is a vast estate owned by Sir Jeremy Wyke, a domain that the mill had once been a part of. England's Lords and countryside landlords are losing their manpower to the autocratic war-machine, as well as having their purses bled dry to finance this terrible conflict and many of them are approaching bankruptcy with remarkable speed. Our friends at the mill fall foul of the corrupt, desperate plans of Sir Jeremy that are designed to reclaim the land on which the mill stands and to absorb the income that it generates. And for Joseph Goss, the owner and the family's Master Miller, that awful day began the same as countless others before it.