Sutton Mill, Coppull Lane, Wigan- Documentary Research

In August 2008, Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) was commissioned by The Environment Agency to carry out documentary research of the site of Sutton Mill, a
former corn mill on Coppull Lane, Wigan (NGR SD 5878 0665). The study was required to inform design proposals for improvements to the River Douglas, which flows immediately to the east of the site.
The origins of Sutton Mill are unclear, and whilst the possibility that the site was occupied by a fulling mill during the medieval period cannot be discounted, firm
evidence is lacking. Sutton Mill is first depicted on a plan of c 1712, and on William Yates’ Survey of the County Palatine of Lancaster, which was published in 1786.
Later, more detailed mapping, shows it as a rectangular structure with two additional out buildings, and an associated weir across the River Douglas. References to a corn mill on Coppull Lane in nineteenth-century trade directories occur from 1828 onwards. In trade directories from 1881 and 1887, and an almanac from 1889, Thomas Charlson is listed as the miller at Sutton Mill. Charlson was the leading corn dealer in Wigan at this time and, by 1889, owned at least three mills in the area.
However, although his business continued into the early 1900s, Sutton Mill is not mentioned in trade directories after 1889, implying that it was sold.