Mill news and topical information - Archive page 26

Organic pork pies made with windmill stoneground flour

Extracted from a widely circulated Press release from the manufacturers (Brockleby's)

"The first organic Melton Mowbray pork pie is being launched at two of the year's most prestigious food festivals.
Brockleby's Organic Pork Pie is the first authentic Melton Mowbray pork pie to be granted official organic status by the Soil Association.
This special pie is made using organic pork from Saddleback pigs raised by farmer Richard Mee at Oakley Grange Farm in Stathern, Leicestershire. Brockleby's, based in Asfordby Hill, Melton Mowbray, makes its own lard and the pie's succulent jelly is created from the trotters of the same rare-breed Saddlebacks. The filling for the pie is made using fresh, not cured, pork which is coarsely chopped, not minced in keeping with a traditional recipe.
The robust, crunchy pastry is made from organic unbleached white flour, which is ground at Whissendine Windmill in Leicestershire.
Brockleby's Organic Pork Pie will be launched at the Soil Association Organic Food Festival, at Bristol Harbourside, on September 1 and 2 and at the Speciality and Fine Food Fair at London's Olympia Exhibition Centre from September 2 to 4. The pie is being retailed throughout Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire and is available nationally on a wholesale basis."

Mills: [Whissendine]
Item: #649, Posted: 22/8/07.

Tilty Watermill, Essex

Darren Stone, who has been very active in the campaign to save Tilty Watermill from house conversion, writes:

"Following a planning application to convert the Grade 2 star listed, complete, intact and very restorable Tilty watermill filed last year, the local council, Uttlesford in Essex voted for the application (despite some very questionable statements at the meeting given to voting councillors), in March.
As Tilty mill is a listed building the next stage is that the local government office for the East of England had to agree with the council's decision or refer it to a planning inquiry.
The Secretary of State decided to 'call in' this planning application to a public inquiry and the planning inspector is now gathering evidence for the inquiry.
Please consider writing or e mailing the planning inspectorate showing your support for saving Tilty and efforts to try to restore it.
Support is needed now more than ever, this could be the last chance to save one of the finest, restorable watermills left. Please write/email and show that there is a future for mills rather than just be another statistic lost to house conversion.
Full details on the Tilty site at http://tiltymills.mysite.orange.co.uk/."

Item: #648, Posted: 22/8/07.

Bicycle clean up in Leiden

The Netherlands is traditionally thought of as a country of bikes and windmills, so a couple of photos on Flickr, (1 and 2) which show both, amused me. The photos show the result of dredging the canal in Leiden, resulting in a large pile of twisted and slime covered bicycle frames.

The photographer seems to specialise in unusual views, and there are a couple of other windmill photos from Leiden that also caught my eye: Windmill and SPAM energy drink, and Windmill and ferris wheel.
Item: #647, Posted: 22/8/07.

Gaulter's Cottage windmill, Preesall

Preesall in Lancashire, like much of the Fylde, has a strong windmill tradition. There's a remaining windmill tower on the Mill Industrial Estate to the south of the centre, and a Mill Street in the centre of town indicating a mill once stood there as well.

In addition, it's been pointed out to me that there is a recently erected post mill out in the grounds of Gaulter's Cottage to the east of town. Apart from the suggestion that the mill is used for woodworking, I have no further details on this.

The mill can be seen in an aerial shot in Google Maps, but also in more details in the oblique views offered by Live Maps.
Item: #646, Posted: 17/8/07.

Star trails at Great Gransden

Andrew Dunn had his camera out late at night as he was watching the Perseids meteor shower. His shot of Great Gransden mill is stunning, composed from six 10 minute exposures, and a shorter one where he painted in the mill in the foreground using a flash gun. No meteors actually show up in the photo - their brief existence unable to register in the overall scheme of things.
Mills: [Great Gransden]
Item: #645, Posted: 14/8/07.

Pateley Bridge Windmill Preservation Group

The Pateley Bridge Windmill Preservation Group was formed some 18 months ago, with the intention of taking down and rebuilding the windmill tower at Pateley Bridge as close to the original as possible. The tower had deteriorated rapidly in recent years and two thirds of it finally collapsed last September. The intention to rebuild remains and they now have the benefit of input and guidance from archaeologists and historical buildings experts and others with essential practical skills.

However, they are still having trouble interpreting the significance of the recesses, slots, grooves etc cut into the stonework, for example, and would appreciate any more details anyone can provide. It evidently had no doorway to permit regular access and its function therefore seems to have been external to the tower. The Windmill Gazeteer from the Mills Research group lists it as used for quarry pumping, but any additional information or references would be welcome.

They recently got a small grant from the Pateley Bridge Town Council to help them in their efforts.

Update:[17/8/07] Some old photos are now available on my details page for this mill, and also more recent ones at geophotoarchive, which show the stones of the tower carefully numbered.
Mills: [Pateley Bridge]
Item: #644, Posted: 13/8/07.

Harnessing the power of water at Three Mills

As part of the preparations for the 2012 Olympics in London, London's waterways through Stratford are getting some deserved attention. Included in this is a new weir above House Mill at Three Mills. British Waterways who have responsibilities for the waterways have written about the mill in their recent Bow Back Rivers Bulletin [PDF], with a good mention of the plans to restore the waterwheels in House mill, for grinding grain once again, and also for electricity generation.
Item: #643, Posted: 13/8/07.

Curb replaced at Holgate Windmill

A new curb ring was craned on to Holgate windmill on Wednesday August 8th. The work of producing the curb ring was done by millwrights R Thompson and Sons of Alford in Lincolnshire, and especially by employee Tom Davis who is carrying on the family tradition, since his father Jim Davis did work on the mill back about 1933.

The nearby Network Rail's Holgate Road site has proved a useful location to build the curb, and will also be used for construction of the replacement cap due to be done later this year.

Update: Some brief videos at YouTube: 1 2
Mills: [Holgate Mill]
Item: #642, Posted: 13/8/07.

L S Lowry at Bexhill, and Oldland Sweeps

Meridan TV local news ran two segements involving windmills. The first involved a vist to Bexhill in the 1960 by L S Lowry, where he painted Downs Windmill.

The second segment reported on the addition of sweeps to Oldlands mill.
Mills: [Keymer] [Bexhill]
Item: #641, Posted: 10/8/07.

Knitting Magazine photo shoot at Jill

There was a photo shoot at Clayton windmills on Monday 6th August for Knitting magazine, due to run in the November issue.

A number of "behind the scenes" photos are available in a set on Flickr.

Update: Corrected date to Monday. Video footage is also available via YouTube.
Mills: [Clayton]
Item: #640, Posted: 6/8/07.

Watermills in the floods

By their nature watermills are situated near rivers, and thus many of them have been affected in the current floods. Some pictures can be found on Flickr:

Tewkesbury in particular has been hard hit this year - the mills were also flooded in January.
Item: #639, Posted: 24/7/07.

Medieval post mill - in Lego

Every set of Lego instructions I had as a kid included a windmill, though these were universally primitive - consisting of a rectangular building with a car wheel protruding, onto which were stuck 4 flat plates for sails.

Lego has moved on a lot since then, though it still takes a skilled and creative user to produce technically accurate models. There is one such model on show via this Flickr photo set. The sails are still rather inaccurate for an English windmill - but look to be a specialist part so I guess that this is the Lego manufacturer's idea of what sails should look like (and in fact they could well be based on Scandanavian windmill examples).
Item: #638, Posted: 20/7/07.

The Mills Archive Bookshop

The Mills Archive has put together a new online bookshop where many books on milling subjects can be purchased. The stock comes from duplicates that have been donated to the archive - and currently includes both full length books, and also more modest publications such as individual papers. It is hoped in future to expand the shop to also offer postcards, prints and other mill-related material.
Item: #637, Posted: 9/7/07.

Spencer Tunick photographing windmills and tulips

Spencer Tunick is known for photographing large groups of people, often in decidedly urban surroundings, where he makes a landscape from the shapes and forms of the massed bodies.

His latest mass photo shoot was in Amsterdam, where he photographed close to 1200 people in a car park. However, a few weeks prior to that shoot, on the 15th April, as a introduction to the Dream Amsterdam project which was sponsoring his works, he had a much smaller scale shoot amongst the tulip fields and windmills of Schermerhorn.

There is also video footage of the Schermerhorn shoot.

Item: #636, Posted: 14/6/07.

Murphy's Windmill - Golden Gate Park

There is a plan afoot to restore the windmills in Golden Gate Park, California. However, the fundraising site for the campaign, Campaign to Save the Golden Gate Park Windmills has not been updated for a number of years, and I have had a great deal of trouble finding out the current state of the project.

Google Maps recently introduced Street Views to their mapping web site, which does give us a useful insight into what has been happening at the site of the Murphy Windmill. From the views (which are undated, but believed to date from within the last year) we can see:

The Dutch windmill on the North side of the park also has some reasonable views

Item: #635, Posted: 14/6/07.

Traditional waterwheel planned on the Mersey

The BBC is reporting on a plan to place a giant waterwheel across the river Mersey as a way of extracting energy from the tides. The advantage of a waterwheel design over a marine current turbine is claimed to be that the waterwheels are robust and low maintenance, compared to the turbines which do however generate more energy.
Item: #634, Posted: 14/6/07.

Hope against the darkness

The classic picture postcard view of a windmill contrasts the brilliant white of the painted sails with that of a perfect blue sky - so prepare your self for an altogether different view at Hope against the darkness which is a very nice view of Cley-next-the-Sea windmill, sunlit, but with a dark grey sky. As the photographer comments, "One of those weird days in the fens."
Mills: [Cley next the Sea]
Item: #633, Posted: 14/6/07.

Photo survey of Fuerteventura

Windmills Fuerteventura 2007 is an extensive photo survey of the windmills of the island. All the photos have been geolocated, which means that you can also view them via a map interface. The photos were taken in February, but only recently uploaded - I'm not surprised it's taken so long to prepare the data with such attention to detail.
Item: #632, Posted: 14/6/07.

Rebuilding a windmill - "De Veer", The Netherlands

Rebuilding a windmill is a set of photos on flickr, documenting the rebuilding of the "De Veer" windmill.

From the description of the photo set:

Windmill "De Veer" burned down in 1998. Reconstruction started in 2001. The photoset shows the rebuilding process.

(Don't believe the dates on the photos - the series documents a number of years' work, not just 2 days that the photo dates would seem to suggest!)
Item: #631, Posted: 14/6/07.

New book on Buckinghamshire watermills by Stanley Freese

Stanley Freese researched the watermills of Buckinghamshire in the 1930's, and now his photographs, drawings and notes have been published as 'The Watermills of Buckinghamshire' by the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society (BAS) at £12.99.

In the 1930, Freese recorded 93 mills, thoonly arounf half still exist. The book includes illustrations of Buckingham, Maids Moreton, Thornborough, Padbury, Westbury, Turweston, Radclive and Bourton amongst others, and details of further mills without illustrations, such as those at Chetwode, Steeple Claydon, Winslow, Leckhampstead and Mursley.
Item: #630, Posted: 15/5/07.

Walkers Sensations TV ad

Walkers ("Crisps") have introduced a new line of corn chips, made with stoneground flour and poppy seeds. The current TV ad for these features what is obviously meant to be a watermill - its got a rather small waterwheel on the side of a stone built building, though with no water feed to it, its not going to be much use! The gearing inside the building turns anyway, and a small millstone is seen, to bring home the point about stoneground.

Oh, and Charlotte Church and Gary Lineker feature as well...

You can view the ad for yourself.
Item: #629, Posted: 14/5/07.

Mills in the Shire

I've written before of the Mills of Middle Earth. A new version of the story, Lord Of the Rings Online, has just been released, and gives us views of the mills once again:

Item: #628, Posted: 14/5/07.

Mills Weekend photo sets from Flickr

I've spotted some photo sets that have been placed on Flickr that relate to activities over this Mills Weekend.

Update:[15/5/07] Add

Stotfold Mill Steam Fair and Country Show

Mills: [Willingham] [Bardwell]
Item: #627, Posted: 13/5/07.

Wicken windmills on Mills Weekend

Amongst the many mills open for National Mills Weekend, Wicken corn windmill was open for a special celebration - the SPAB presented the volunteers who have brought Wicken mill back to full working order with one of the Society's plaques in recognition of the achievements.

Wicken village continued the tradition of having two windmills at work for the weekend - the pumping mill nearby at Wicken Fen was also set to work in the plentiful breeze.

Update:[14/5/07] The pair of mills are also shown on this day by a couple of geographs by Gareth Hughes - SPAB Mills Section chairman, who presented the plaque - Wicken and Wicken Fen.
Mills: [Wicken] [Wicken Fen]
Item: #626, Posted: 13/5/07.

Some news coverage of Mills Weekend

National Mills Weekend is this weekend. As well as the SPAB National Mills Weekend page a few other reports of what will be open include:

Item: #625, Posted: 11/5/07.

Previous archive - Current news - Index of headlines - Next archive

Last updated 19th March 2008