George Bennett was born in 1789 in Keymer and christened in the church of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian on the 7th June. He was the fifth eldest child of Richard Bennet, a local Yeoman farmer, and his wife Jenny (nee Simmons). Richard was a contemporary of Thomas Turner whose family owned Oldland Mill. George was already employed as a miller when he married Anne Holford in Lindfield in May 1818 and was living in Bolney at the time so may have been working at the Mill there. George worked as the tenant miller, at Old Land Mill from about 1819, when their eldest child Edward was born in the Mill House, followed by Frederick in 1821 and Frances in 1822. But by 1828 the family moved to Falmer where George worked a miller there, then in Edward Street in Brighton as a grocer.
Text from: “The Millers’ of Old Land Mill” by Colin Hewitt.
