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Mill news and topical information - Archive page 21

windmills Windmills in the snow via Flickr

As snow hits parts of the UK and Europe this week, photographers have been out and about taking pictures of windmills in the snow. I rather like this image by Rachel of a bare tower with snow caught on each of the bricks, though I can't identify which mill it actually is (though I believe it in Lincolnshire).

Another photographer has gone out and taken photos of another Lincolnshire windmill - the six sailed Waltham windmill. There is also a photo of the Dutch De molen van Niebert in Groningen, and another Dutch windmill whose location is not given.


Mills: [Waltham]
Item: #524, Posted: 30/12/05.

mills Biggleswade mills

The Comet, a Hertfordshire newspaper, has run two articles recently covering the mills around the village of Biggleswade. The first article, A look at the past: Mills date back to Domesday age covered the watermills of Biggleswade Mill and Langford Mill, whilst the second, Nostalgia: The winds of change covered Biggleswade windmill.

The windmill was built in 1858, by the local millwrights Thomas Course and Sons, and worked through to the early 1950s, though laterly by electricity. Although a listed building, the owners, Dalgety Franklin Ltd, in 1967 demolished it with the permission of the local planners. The millwrights themselves operated from 1946 till 1908, at 101 Hitchin Street, and the building was later used as a factory to build wireless radios, finally being demolished in 2003 to build houses.
Item: #523, Posted: 10/12/05.

watermills Inappropriate development at Mellis mill opposed

The furniture company Multiyork have a store in the old mill at Mellis, Suffolk. They have submitted plans to demolish an existing extension, and to build a new store alongside. The parish council is objecting to the plans, on the grounds that the building, which will be much larger than the current extension, is inapproriate for the area, which is a conservation area.
Item: #522, Posted: 10/12/05.

energy Reading wind turbine completed

Ecotricity have completed construction of a very visble 2MW wind turbine at junction 11 of the M4 near Reading. This turbine, above a business park, is one of the largest land based turbines in the UK, and will produce enough electricity to supply 1500 homes and businesses.

Image courtesy of Z303 at flickr.


Item: #521, Posted: 5/12/05.

windmills Challenge Tommy Walsh

The current series of Challenge Tommy Walsh which airs on some of the Discovery Channels, contains a program where they work on a windmill.

Tommy was asked "What was the most challenging job in this series?" and replied
I would say was every single one of them was a tough job and I do question myself if I should see a psychiatrist that my wife recommended! The windmill one - was that we chose to put a room at the top of the windmill. So we had no room to work, and we had to create a working platform, scaffold outside so every thing had to come up 4 flights. By the end of each day I was truly going crackers!!
The programme mentioned that it was a Lincolnshire windmill - 'near Boston', but not having seen the programme, I've not been able to further identify it.

Update:The mill featured is Toft's Mill, Wrangle, and there's lot of photos of the challenge on the website.
Mills: [Wrangle]
Item: #520, Posted: 18/11/05.

windmills The Lost Windmill of West Cowes

The Lost Windmill of West Cowes is a recently published piece of research by Alan Stroud into a suspected, but previously unproven windmill that stood in West Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. Detailed research shows that the mill, built for Thomas Kelleway around 1804 worked for just 2 or 3 years, before apparently losing out to a better positioned mill at the higher edge of the same field. The tower survived for a few years, known as Prospect Tower, but was gone by the time of the 1862 Ordnance Survey map.
Item: #519, Posted: 15/11/05.

windmills Highfields windmill by Hornby

Hornby trains have introduced a model windmill into their scale model building range. It's a tarred six sided smock mill, with a two storey brick base, and a fantail, and is available in both their Skaledale range (HO scale), and in Lyddle End (N Guage).


Item: #518, Posted: 15/11/05.

windmills Life in a Dutch Windmill

The September 2005 edition of Roundabout, an English language magazine published in the Netherlands carries an article about Molen van Piet in Alkmaar, and the couple Cees and Rayann Piet who live in it. However, this is no house conversion - it's a working mill, which in order to be eligible for government subsidies, has a counter installed to ensure the sails make the minimum 500,000 revolutions a year to qualify.
Item: #517, Posted: 13/11/05.

energy Pocket sized wind turbines

Shashank Priya at the University of Texas, Arlington, has come up with a method to supply electricity to remote sensors, far removed from any grid system. His solution is to produce small wind turbines, roughly 10cm in diameter. The rotational motion of the turbine in the breeze turns a cam, which flexes a number of piezo electric crystals, giving rise to sufficient current to power a small electronic sensor. The power source is an alternative to photovoltaics, which of course fail to work in the dark, or on very cloudy days.

Detailed results are included in the paper:
S. Priya, D. Fye and J. Zhand, Piezoelectric Windmill. A novel solution to remote sensing, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 44, 104-108 (2004).

Item: #516, Posted: 9/11/05.

misc Turner prize finalists include a windmill projection

The 4 finalists for this year's Turner prize have been revealed at Tate Britain. One of these, Darren Almond's If I Had You, includes projected images of an illuminated windmill - part of the famous Blackpool illuminations.
Item: #515, Posted: 7/11/05.

misc Jerrems silver token, 1811

My currency page has long mentioned a shilling token issued by Williams Jerrems in 1811, but with little info about it. I have now been provided with more information by Ray Jerrems, the great great great grandson of the issuer.
William Jerrems was born in Willingham-by-Stow (6 miles from Gainsborough) in 1782. A 1805 Gainsborough directory lists him as "Jerrems and Metcalfe, Grocers and Tea Merchants". A 1830 directory lists him as "Grocer and Tea Dealer" in Silver Street Gains. He and his wife Elizabeth had 12 children, 8 of whom survived.

The book Boyne "Silver Tokens of Great Britain and Ireland" from 1866 refers to a 1811 Silver token Obv. "William Jerrems. Gainsboro.=A three-masted Ship Sailing", Rev.ONE SHILLING. SILVER TOKEN. 1811.=A Windmill."

Silver Street appears to have been a street of retail shops. Gainsborough was a river port, and about 15 years later built a customs house. There exists references to Jerrems Street, Square, Yard and Terrace but not a mill.

Item: #514, Posted: 31/10/05.

misc Windy Miller back at work for Quaker Oats

First airing on 19th Sept 2005, there is a recent set of two TV ads that have resurrected Windy Miller and his windmill. The ads are for Quaker Oats and Oatso Simple. Made using stop motion animation, just like the original series, the models have been accurately recreated from remaining illustrations by Artem.

The Trumptonshire Trilogy has detailed coverage, and you can see the actual ads at Loose Moose. There is even analysis of the ads from the BBC.
Item: #513, Posted: 21/10/05.

windmills Chislet smock mill burns down

The smock mill at Chislet in Kent, which had just received a grant for holding repairs, was burnt down last night. 20 firefighters were in attendance, but were unable to save the structure which has now collapsed.
Mills: [Chislet]
Item: #512, Posted: 16/10/05.

mills TIMS website switchover

TIMS (The International Molinological Society) has long had its webpages hosted on a server at http://tims.geo.tudelft.nl, though the pages have also been available via the URL http://www.timsmills.info. With immediate effect, the pages are only available via the http://www.timsmills.info URL, and it has not even been possible to maintain the old server to redirect visitors during a transition period.

Please adjust your bookmarks - and update any links in webpages that you are responsible for to point at the new site. There's a lot of info on the TIMS site, and I found that I had close to thirty links here that I needed to adjust.
Item: #511, Posted: 12/10/05.

windmills V International Conference on Molinology

The Spanish organized V International Conference on Molinology takes place in Cuidad Real, Castilla-La Mancha from 19th-21st October 2005. The rich windmill history of the region has added significance this year, as it's the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, whose fictional exploits have made those windmills so famous! There is also a brief outline available in English.

In related news, the Proceedings of the IV Conference, held in Mallorca 1st-3rd May 2003, have just been published, as a heavy two volume set. The conference took place in a variety of languages (Spanish, Mallorcan, English, Italian) with simultaneous translation provided, but the proceedings are overwhelmingly in Spanish.
Item: #510, Posted: 11/10/05.

windmills Cley-next-the-Sea - the James Blunt connection

Over the summer, James Blunt has had both the UK number 1 album (Back to Bedlam), and also a number 1 single (You're Beautiful).

James spent part of his childhood in Norfolk - his grandfather was Norfolk's deputy lieutenant, and the Blount family has owned the windmill at Cley-next-the-Sea since the 1920's. Now owned by James' father, the mill is run as a guesthouse, though James has apparent dreams of turning it into a recording studio.
Mills: [Cley next the Sea]
Item: #509, Posted: 3/10/05.

watermills Gibson Mill reopened to the public

The National Trust owned water powered cotton mill of Gibson Mill in Hardcastle Crags, Yorkshire has reopened after an extensive renovation, partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The vision for the mill is to run the centre, for locals and visitors, in a sustainable way. The mill generates its own electricity via turbines (both a restored 1927 one, and a modern one), with solar and biomass energy sources also involved. Even the lifts are human powered!
Item: #508, Posted: 27/9/05.

windpumps Who has seen the wind?

Who has seen the wind? is a new poster by Texas based photographer Rick Vanderpool, showing a montage of mostly wind engines and pumps from the Southern States. Locations whose engines have been pictured include many of the significant American windmill collections, including those along the Wind Power Trail, as well as a number of other individual locations.
Item: #507, Posted: 21/9/05.

windmills Eastbourne and District Preservation Trust - 40 years on

Polegate windmill is owned by the Eastbourne and District Preservation Trust, which was formed 40 years ago. Celebrations are taking place at the mill on Saturday, 10th September.
Mills: [Polegate]
Item: #506, Posted: 8/9/05.

windmills 3d model of Tehachapi wind farm - and a traditional windmill

Google Earth is a downloaded program from Google, that provides a viewer onto a 3d globe, showing aerial and satellite images of the places.

Whilst the definition of the images is only sometimes sufficient to show up individual windmills (or wind turbines for that matter) they can be found, and I'm working on providing a list of places where you can see them.

In the meantime, check out this 3d model of Tehachapi wind farm, which for some reason seems to have acquired a wooden built traditional windmill in the middle of the turbines!
Item: #505, Posted: 4/9/05.

watermills Cash flows in the old mill streams

The Sunday Times of August 28th 2005 had an article entitled Cash flows in the old mill streams which describes the increasing number of watermills that are installing mini-hydropower systems to generate electricity.

Getting detailed coverage is Gants Mill in Somerset.
Item: #504, Posted: 31/8/05.

windmills What did the sails of Dereham mill look like?

Dereham windmill, cosmetically restored in 1987, is currently looking rather sorry for itself - a combination of storm damage to its sails, and vandal damage to the structure itself.

There are early plans to restore the mill more completely - back to working order, but these have hit a snag - noone knows what the sails should look like. The sails which are on the mill now (the storm damaged ones) are inappropriate - but since the working ones were removed in 1922, the trustees are appealing to see if anyone has photos of the mill prior to this date. Either let me know if you have, or contact Geoff Hayton on 01362 694030.
Mills: [East Dereham]
Item: #503, Posted: 31/8/05.

watermills Rebuilding the Snaefell Wheel, Laxey

A picture of a few days ago at geograph shows that the Snaefell Wheel, Laxey is now in place, and substantially complete. Scaffolding currently surrounds the wheel, which is downstream of the famous Laxey wheel - the largest waterwheel in the world.

The Snaefell wheel started out its life on the Isle of Man, but when it was redundant at the Snaefell mines in 1910, it was shipped to Cornwall, where it had a second life pumping out a china clay pit. Disassembed again in the 1970's, it went into storage, and later on to a mining museum in Wales, which never got around to reassembling it. Negotiations have since brought it back to the Isle of Man, where its restoration and reassembly has been going on for a couple of years.

Full details are provided on the The Snaefell Wheel Project.
Item: #502, Posted: 31/8/05.

windmills Rounding out the county gazeteer

Although I covered most of the counties in the UK, there were some gaps in my coverage, both in missing counties, and also in some of the richer windmill counties (notably Norfolk and Lincolnshire) where I only included a relatively few selected mills. These gaps have now been filled.

In addition, the contents of the county pages are quite a bit richer. I've lost count of exactly what changes I've made, but highlights include: As always feel free to point out any errors I've made in incorporating this new material - though you might want to hold off for a few days, since not all the uploads will necessarily occur at once.
Item: #501, Posted: 25/8/05.

windmills Windmills in the salinas of the Turks and Caicos Islands

For a number of years the National Museum of the Turks and Caicos has been investigating the windmills which once helped move the brine around the salinas as part of the islands salt industry. They even went as far in 1997 as to recover a 200pound cast iron millhead, with the objective of learning more about its construction, and possibly allowing them to rebuild a working machine. However even with the recovered hub and millhead, and with measurements taken from a survey of a number of other partial survivors, they don't feel they yet have enough information to proceed. Of the 50 mills that once existed, only 2 are in anywhere near working condition, the harsh salt conditions are tough on the metal parts, and the industry has been extinct for a couple of generations, so those that built and worked the mills have since died off.

The islands' Chamber of Commerce has now become involved in the plan to restore the windmills on Grand Turk, and have contacted me to see if I can help locate any construction plans or other details for the windmills. The mills are built of metal, (with wooden sails) including some heavyweight castings, so were obviously manufactured in some numbers. Does anyone know of any source of further information about their manufacture. Please let me know if you do.

I've located a number of images of the mills, in case that helps jog your memory: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Item: #500, Posted: 25/8/05.
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