Early in man's history, the only power he possessed to motivate the primitive tools he required to carry out tasks such as grinding corn into flour for his bread was provided by his own arms or the somewhat greater strength of some domesticated animal.
It soon become obvious to him that Nature herself provided him two great sources of energy in the elements, wind and water. Both were violent enough to be enemies at times but if harnessed could serve him with unlimited power. Man saw that where streams ran down from the hills to join the large rivers on their way to the sea, the water could be made to turn a wheel.
The wind could be used to turn the sails of a mill, but where the wind was fickle in that it could not always be relied upon to be there when it was needed, water was more constant in its behaviour and in any case it could be stored in a dam that allowed it to be released to provide a flow as and when needed.
The Ganlow Brook rises in the Clent Hills from whence it flows down to meet the River Stour. The brook moves fairly fast through a narrow course and so it became, over a period of time, the prime mover to manufacture the tools necessary to the rural community of the area and later to the growing industrial area.
Within a mile of Churchill station there is evidence of their having been ten watermills and a windmill, some dating back to Saxon times. In fact it is thought that there were more watermills in this locality that in any other equal area of England.
It is difficult to realise, standing in the tranquillity of this picturesque old mill, that at one time Churchill was the centre of a vigorous industrial area engaged mainly in corn milling and iron founding.
The earliest history of Churchill Forge is given in a Charter granted in the reign of Henry III. This is on parchment in Latin and is in the reference library in Birmingham. The Charter states that in 1238 Robert de Hurcote gave Hugh Drugel "the whole land of Churchill with the advowson of the church and the mill" in the marriage with his sister Margery. Robert paid twenty shillings to the Lord of Hagley for the vill(age) and a yearly rent of six shillings and eight pence to the Prior of Dudley for the mill at Churchill. There were eighteen witnesses to this deed of grant and they were probably the guests at the wedding.
In 1368 another Charter recites a grant from Donimus de Duclent to John de Duclent, son of Edmund de Duclent, and Alice his wife, of "six shillings worth of annual rent from the mill at Churchill". This deed names one of the witnesses as Thomas Penne of Harborowe. In 1538 a bond was made and endorsed by Bishop Lyttleton whereby Thomas Penn of Harborowe would pay "twenty pounds sterling" to Richard Penn for the sale of Brake Mill. A blade mill and pool are mentioned in another account toward the end of the sixteenth century.
The first recorded involvement of the Bache family in Churchill Forge was in 1796, when William Bache married Penelope Willets, whose family owned the forge at that time. The Baches, at that time, ran nearby Stakenbridge Forge and the marriage united the two businesses.
For more information on the Bache family and Churchill Forge see Churchill Forge and the Bache Family