PRN 64906 Until the middle of the seventeenth century, two watermills stood close to each other in the Riverside area, between the bend in the river at Watergate end and the bridge over Southgate. The position of the Malt Mill (or Town Mill) can still be seen clearly enough at the junction of the present shopping precinct and Southgate, because the modern building which replaced it straddles the river as no other property in Sleaford does. Before the precinct was built, the mill was almost invisible from Southgate. It was reached along the yard between the precinct and Westgate. Immediately next door was an associated bakery. The mill fell out of use sometime in the twentieth century. In its disused state, the Malt Mill was widely and unfairly blamed in 1947 for exacerbating the flooding which all but drowned this part of the town in that year. The mill was finally demolished in 1973.{1} The Malt Mill appears in fourteenth century accounts and was probablt there long vefore that date.{1}