These show the demolition of the mill that gave Oxford Mills its name. This was the site of the stone grist mill, started by Asa Clothier and completed by Richey Waugh. The building was constructed of locally quarried limestone. Originally two-storey’s over a basement, a wooden top floor was added to accommodate new technology. The basement housed two large water wheels connected by pulleys and shafts to operate the mill. Water to power the wheels came through two large doors.
Asa Clothier, whose father had founded Kemptville in 1817, had tried to repeat his father’s achievement by starting a community of his own. He had built a timber dam, built a saw mill and started a grist mill on the South Branch. He had a surveyor lay out the village site, dividing it into small lots of one-quarter and one-fifth acres. But Rickey Waugh and Aaron Merrick were able to take advantage of bad times for the Clothier family. In 1850, their Kemptville properties were foreclosed on, and they were forced to sell the Oxford Mills lands to meet their debts. Waugh employed fourteen people in his mills, and the store he had also opened. In 1852, he built the impressive stone building that today houses the Brigadoon Restaurant in Oxford Mills.
The store operated in conjunction with the mills. The sale of flour from the mill paid for the goods that stocked the store shelves. The local farmers and labourers brought their grain to the mill, for which they bartered their other produce and part of the resulting flour supply. Then they traded further for the goods in the store. The flour was shipped by rail to Montreal, where a wholesaler sold it on for a commission.
In 1959, the Department of Public Works replaced the original dam, built in the late 1850’s, with a new concrete one. The mill was demolished in 1961 when concern was expressed about the danger to people should it collapse. In the event, it took quite a lot of effort to bring the old mill down, a testament to the builders who had first built it over a century before. The steam boilers were unearthed in 2001 when the retaining wall was being rebuilt and were once again covered over.