A 1,000-year-old water mill in southwest England has resumed production to meet demand for flour during the current coronavirus outbreak.

The Sturminster Newton Mill was last fully operational in 1970, before becoming a museum and normally producing flour just two days a month during the summer. Pete Loosmoore, the supervisor of the historic mill, told CNN: “We were set to open for the season when the coronavirus hit. Our first reaction was we have to close down and pack up. But we realized that many local shops had no flour in them and people were desperate for it.” With the mill closed to visitors, “we had a couple of tonnes of good quality milling wheat that we could use,” added Loosmore. It takes the mill a day to produce 30 kilograms of bread flour, and so far the team of volunteer millers have delivered more than two hundred 3.3-pound (1.5kg) bags of flour to local shops and bakeries. There is evidence of a mill being on the site since 1016 — predating the Norman invasion — and it was mentioned in the Domesday Book, a vast survey of life in Norman England ordered by William the Conqueror and published in 1086. The current mill was built in 1556, a few years before Queen Elizabeth I took to the throne and more than 200 years before the United States Declaration of Independence. It was upgraded in 1904. UK shoppers have been experiencing shortages of flour on supermarket shelves. As lockdown measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 continue, people staying at home have been baking more and both regular bulk buyers and consumers have been purchasing much more than normal.