It is a small detail, easily overlooked, but it points to a much older story buried beneath the yard east of the ruins of Gracedieu Nunnery.

The Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656 records a mill at Gracedieu, suggesting the site had been in use for grinding grain well before the present structure was built. The 19th-century mill almost certainly occupies the same ground, and that re-used corbel may be a physical remnant of the earlier building. Running south of the nunnery and eastward past it is a millrace, the channel cut to direct water from a stream onto a mill wheel, and in 1988 an investigation of this feature produced findings that complicated the picture considerably. The millrace had been lined with a strong mortar-bonded wall, and the remains of a substantial wall were found to its north, possibly serving some related structural purpose. Wall trenches were also identified in the surrounding area. The significant detail is this: most of the finds recovered from the site were medieval in character, which led the archaeologist M. Gowen to conclude that the structures, enigmatic as they remain, are likely connected to the medieval occupation of the nunnery rather than to any later phase of building.

Gracedieu Nunnery itself is a scheduled monument, and the mill remains sit in the yard to its east. Access to the wider site should be confirmed before visiting, as the nunnery ruins and associated features are on private or managed land. The millrace is the most atmospheric element of the site for those with an interest in water management and medieval infrastructure; its course past the nunnery gives a sense of how the religious community would have organised its practical needs alongside its religious ones. The corbel inside the mill building is easy to miss but worth looking for, a small stone that has outlasted almost everything around it.