The waters of Charles Run turned the gears at Manor Mill for the first time the same year Handel’s “Messiah” debuted — 1742 — decades before the Revolutionary War.

The nearly 3-century-old grist mill in Monkton, originally powered by a 24-foot waterwheel to grind grain into flour, has worn many hats: a long-abandoned mill, an antique shop and, most recently, a failed cidery.

None of that deterred Angelo Otterbein.

An entrepreneur with a background in educational technology, Otterbein bought the 6-acre property at a 2019 auction for $360,000. The first challenge was cleaning up the mold-riddled buildings chock-full of 250 barrels of spoiled cider.

He began the renovations by hauling all the garbage out of the mill buildings near the busy intersection of Monkton, Shepperd and Falls roads. His efforts during the coronavirus pandemic’s shutdown days inspired his northern Baltimore County neighbors to pitch in.

“It was like its own barn raising, or whatever the modern-day equivalent of that is,” Otterbein said. “People really came out of nowhere. They were psyched.”

A community of volunteers and college students working for minimum wage helped Otterbein clean out and fix up the historic mill and miller’s house. He had heating and air conditioning installed, and before long Manor Mill opened to the public in August 2021.

Over the past few years, that same community has helped turn the space into a cultural hub in the county.

“The mill is a lot of people coming to me and saying, ‘So I have an idea’” Otterbein said.

Manor Mill offerings

The original stone-and-brick mill building is split across several levels.

A gift shop on the ground floor sells handmade goods from artists and artisans across the greater Baltimore region. Upstairs, a gallery offers artwork for $500 or less throughout the holiday season. Adjacent to the gallery, instructors teach yoga and meditation in studios.

“The challenge of this place is we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Otterbein said. “So, how do we incentivize people to come?”

The answer, so far, has been offering a variety of activities, events and learning opportunities, from songwriting to welding to theater.

Vanessa Eskridge, a Monkton resident who lives a mile up the road from Manor Mill, said she was shocked by how willing Otterbein was to start a theater company.

“I didn’t know Angelo very well,” she said. “And I kinda cornered him one day and he just looked at me and said, ‘I just get excited about what other people are excited about and you seem excited!’”

From there Manor Mill Playhouse was born.

Eskridge said they have produced three shows‚ “Our Town,” a separate series of one-act plays and “Murder on the Orient Express,” in partnership with Oldfields School — a nearby girls boarding school that allows Manor Mill to perform at its theater.

In addition to theater, the mill also hosts popular musical performances, including recent shows by singer-songwriter Dave Hause, banjo artist Tony Trischka and folk duo The Honey Dewdrops.

Touring artists play shows at The Loft — Manor Mill’s cozy concert venue — and bands will inscribe their names and the date of the show onto strips of repurposed cider barrels.

Curious out-of-towners, whom Otterbein said often include folks from as close as Towson, can rent the original miller’s house on Airbnb for a long weekend.

A wishing well, a faerie trail and barn

In between the mill and the old miller’s house, there’s a wishing well into which visitors are encouraged to flick a coin. (You can purchase a pouch of so-called faerie coins at the gift shop, and proceeds go to charity — easier than fishing the quarters no one carries anymore out of the well, Otterbein said).

In the woods behind the mill, a faerie trail beckons.

Manor Mill’s youngest visitors have decorated a quarter mile of the property, to the faeries — complete with miniature dollhouses for their winged friends and gnomes alike, along with a set of rules to abide by:

Please don’t break./ Please don’t take./ And maybe some day ... bring something you make.

Inside the barn are power tools galore and glimpses of the mill’s past lives.

There’s a “Manor Mill II Antiques” sign bearing the name of the family store that began after the mill ceased grist operations in the mid-1900s, and then “Millstone Cellars,” the farmhouse cidery that operated there in the 2010s.

Nowadays, the barn hosts workshops on how to work with hand tools, build birdhouses and, in January, how to make a barred owl nesting box.

Barn manager Tom Parmelee teaches most classes and leads construction for the sets of Manor Mill Playhouseproductions.

“I don’t know any other theater out there attached to a woodworking barn,” Eskridge said.

She said barn raising is an apt way to describe the relationship among the mill’s creative community — many of whom make up the actors, artists and craftspeople who define the playhouse.

From relic to restoration

Otterbein’s next challenge is to restore the mill’s 24-foot waterwheel — one of Maryland’s largest — that once harnessed the power of Charles Run to spin millstones and grind grain into flour.

Robert Jones, a master carpenter and timber framer, is on deck, literally, to turn 16,000 pounds of white oak lumber into a functional waterwheel.

Manor Mill was encouraging community members to contribute to the wheel’s restoration by purchasing a $600 paddle — 72 are needed. All of them have been sold, said Otterbein, who’s optimistic about Jones’ progress.

“‘It’ll build itself,’ Robert always says,” Otterbein said. “There’s a little bit of improv there, combined with 50-plus years of skill.”

That’s not unlike the way Manor Mill, similar to the community it serves and supports, operates.