WATER is once again turning a 150 year-old waterwheel at Abbey Mill, Tintern, which was taken away last November for restoration by the Overlooking the Wye project.

Many hours of careful work by Penybryn Engineering was spent on the wheel.

At the end of March more than five tonnes of beautifully restored waterwheel was brought back to the Abbey Mill and returned to its rightful place.

On Monday this week the wheel was reopened and the water allowed to flow over it.

One of the people glad to see the restored wheel in action again, after 50 years of lying dormant, is Brian Jones. Mr Jones remembers his father working in the Abbey Mill, when the waterwheel powered a sawmill.

When this waterwheel was first running, Tintern was very different, says a spokesman for the AONB which is overseeing the project.

The Angiddy River that turns the waterwheel once powered a busy and important industrial centre all the way down the Angiddy Valley. Mill ponds, furnaces and forges gave rise to a noisy and smoky environment that employed many people. Abbey Mill was part of that industrial past with the Quay, now filled in, which was crucial for transporting material out of Tintern along the Wye.

The Abbey Mill is now preserved as part of a craft shop and café complex owned and run by Chris and Shelly Rastall who contributed to the work and are delighted with the newly restored wheel.