Dinham Millennium Green and the new Mill on the Green, which opened on August Bank Holiday 2009, is well worth a visit. Here at Dinham you may still walk the land which formed the oldest settlement in the town. Today the imposing ruined castle epitomises Ludlow’s antiquity.

Historically Dinham has been both workplace and playground for the inhabitants of Ludlow. The first record of a corn mill on the exact footprints of the present Mill was in 1331; though it’s likely one existed here much earlier. Later there were 2 more mills which, in 1368, were deemed the most important corn mills in the town.

In Victorian times the corn mill gave way to a water-powered Iron and Brass Foundry established by Chaplin Hodges in 1827. Early in the twentieth century, the same mill building housed the turbine of the new Ludlow Electric Light Company. When this was disbanded a single attendant remained in residence at the mill, and the area now known as the Green became overgrown.

Later the site was used as a swimming pool, and the mill was used as the changing rooms. When the area fell into disuse, the then South Shropshire District Council elected to use the space for a housing development. In 1998, the Ludlow Guild ’98 was formed by local residents (now known as the Millennium Green Trust), who opposed the development and wanted to restore the mill and create the Millennium Green for residents to enjoy. The Trust also owns the Castle Weir, and a strip of woodland downstream of Dinham Bridge. The entire site is now designated within an SSSI classification.

The site is also well-known in history for its leisure uses. The river Teme has been used for bathing, fishing and boating. In the 19th century there was a Big Freeze, during which the river froze over and residents skated on it! In the early twentieth century Regattas were held on the river, and in the 1970s there were a series of water carnivals, known as Kinky Kraft Races.