Such conversions include a garage, dwellings, restaurants, museums and a wedding venue.
Some watermills are mere derelict shells, lower walls or lesser remains.
The mill building survives in part, incorporated into a dwelling and retaining the waterwheel.
The site may have been a hammer mill, witnessed by Ironmasters Cottage Wing mentioned in recent property sale particulars.
This forge was active during the reign of Henry VIII, when it was making "gunstones of iron".
His Majesty was in arrears with payments for munitions supplied, leading to financial trouble for the ironmaster in 1530.
In 1574 the forge was owned by Lord Buckhurst and worked by George Bullen.
John Everest was the Miller at the time of his death in 1790 when he was succeeded, in accordance with his will, by his eldest son Edward.
It was owned by someone by the name of Stace in 1574, Sir Walter Waller in 1588–90 (occupied by John Phillips) and in 1599 Thomas Browne sold cannon here.
In 1303, Henry de Cobham built a bridge at his own cost to replace the ford.
This was swept away by a storm in 1337 and Thomas de Cobham (his son), erected a footbridge in its place.
Paper from Chafford Mills was used to print postage stamps for Jamaica, The Transvaal and the Falkland Islands.
An agreement between Tonbridge Priory and the bishop of Rochester in 1353 mentions a mill at "Yenesfield" - the present day Ensfield Farm.A
This was a gunpowder mill, established in 1811[25] by John Children and William Burton of Tonbridge.
In the early 1820s the Burton family bought the land, which had been leased initially.
[22] In 1834, Thomas Wells of Powder Mills died and was buried at Penshurst.
After World War I, production was cut back, and Curtis's and Harveys had become part of Explosives Trade Ltd, which became Nobel Industries Ltd in 1920.
Production ceased in 1934, with the manufacturing of explosives being transferred to Ardeer in Scotland.
In 1942, the site was bought by T G East and Son, and developed as a small pharmaceutical works.
In later years it was run by the Arnold family, who were previously at Bartley Mill, Frant.
It belonged to Temple Strood Manor and in the mid-fourteenth century contained "two water mills under one roof".
An engraving by S & N Buck dated 1721 shows the mill, and it appears in "A Distant View of Rochester and Chatham" by Joshua Farington, RA, in 1790.
The mill had two undershot waterwheels and was valued in the Church Rate Books of 1764 at £64.1s.1d.
The other wheel worked two pairs of French Burr stones, wheat cleaners, flour dressers and the sack hoist.
There was a tide mill marked on 1575/1610 maps of the Brook area of Chatham, where the Old Bourne River entered the Medway.
By 1765, the Mill is not on the map and the river had been canalised, running alongside the road known as the Brook, and soon after it had been culverted.