Constable's realistic take on the countryside was the result of a childhood spent surrounded by the everyday routines of rural life - the section of river in the picture is a few metres downstream from Flatford Mill in Suffolk's Stour Valley, where he grew up.

Water power has been used in Britain since Roman times, with water mills coming into common use in Suffolk in around the seventh century. Although the windmill was a later arrival, emerging at the end of the 12th century, it ended up being the county's dominant power-generating technology. The generally shallow gradient of Suffolk's rivers meant that in Constable's time there were only around 100 working water mills in the entire county, many of which had to rely on a nearby windmill as a secondary power source.

Growth of textile production

Originally water mills were used for grinding corn, but with the rise of the cloth industry in the late Middle Ages they played a vital role in the early stages of the mechanisation of textile production. From the 15th century, fulling mills – fulling is the process that strengthens freshly-woven cloth by compressing and binding its fibres – used water power to drive a frame of pounding hammers; previously cloth had been fulled by people treading it, barefoot, in tubs of stale urine.

Although at the peak of production Suffolk supplied more cloth than any other county in England, by the end of the 18th century, large-scale textile production in the north of England had starved the county's craftspeople of trade and the fulling mills were all closed.

From water wheels to turbines

By Constable's time most of Suffolk's water mills, like his father's, were used for corn milling, although some powered other processes, including silk throwsting (twisting silk into yarn), papermaking, oil manufacture, flax spinning, water pumping and cement grinding. But as the 19th century progressed, water wheels were slowly phased out and replaced by more efficient water turbines.

Water mills have generally survived better than windmills as their more conventional shape and generous size makes them easier to maintain and to justify keeping: of the 500 or so windmills that once stood in Suffolk, today only 20 or so survive, whereas just under half of the county's hundred or so original water mills remain, and of those, a quarter have kept part or all of their working parts. Flatford Mill is not one of them – the building now forms part of an educational centre run by the Field Studies Council - www.field-studies-council.org

Although none of Suffolk's water mills still operate on a daily basis, there are working mechanisms at a handful of sites, including Pakenham (www.pakenhamwatermill.co.uk) and Woodbridge Tide Mill (www.tidemill.org.uk). Nationwide there are around 100 windmills and water mills still capable of grinding corn, and many form the basis of successful flour businesses.

You can visit working water mills and mill buildings during National Mills Weekend (www.spab.org.uk/mills), an event run annually on the second weekend in May by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.