Mill news and topical information - Archive page 28

Windmills of Somerset

Bill Bryson speaks to the SPAB AGM

As President of the CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) Bill Bryson is more than appreciative of the built heritage of England, and as a Norfolk resident he's likely to see many windmills and windpumps in his regular routine, which made him a great choice to speak at this years SPAB AGM.

The photo shows him speaking, in a presentation that touched on why he loves England, what he wants to change about it (including the loss of front gardens, poor siting of power pylons, the loss of hedgerows, and so much litter), and a retelling of the classic joke about hiking in bear country.

A windmill made from straw bales

I don't have much to go on here, except a couple of photos on Flickr showing a superficially reasonably accurate windmill constructed (according to the caption) from straw bales. The tower is certainly fairly irregular and appears to be without openings, but is topped with a rounded cap holding sails and a fantail. These wooden items look to have been quite solidly constructed - so it's perhaps not as temporary a structure as straw bales might suggest.

The photos are simply labelled "Straw Bale Wind Mill 1" and "Straw Bale Wind Mill 2", with the only clues to the location being that it's in a photo stream called "Road Trip (Llandudno 2008)".

As soon as I posted this item, it was suggested to me that this may be this year's straw construction by Snugburys ice cream farm in Hurleston, who have been creating such constructions for 10 years or more.

I have finally confirmed this, via Straw windmill is a cool idea.

Chase Tower, Newhall, Harlow

The "landmark" Chase Tower at Newhall, Harlow is designed to resemble a very large scale post mill body. As such, I guess it deserves a place on my mock mills page, though it's avoided adding any sails to the structure which is actually an apartment block.

The building features on the cover of the Government's newly published Eco-towns Prospectus, where it is described thus:

The Chase Tower apartment block by Cala Domus, at Newhall, Harlow. Winner of CABE Building for Life Gold Award 2005. A distinctive landmark building in the 74-home development, the Chase Tower mimics a windmill to generate electricity for the communal parts of the building with photo voltaic panels.

Windmill paintings by Noel Garner

Noel Garner has been painting and drawing windmills and pumps for the past twenty years - always on site - never from photographs. They are not for sale, but he has put together a website to give them wider exposure.

The mills featured include ones across the UK, in particular Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Somerset.

Possible Murphy windmill progress

After having stalled for many years, it looks as if work on rebuilding the Murphy windmill in Golden Gate Park has restarted.

My only evidence for this is a photo on flickr which is not positively identified, but does look as if it could be the Murphy windmill base, now sporting a new stage. It's a slightly strange way to be going about rebuilding a windmill - I would have thought that getting the uprights in first would have been far better, and that having the stage in place would stop you getting the necessary access to the base to make the body easy to build.

The most photographed windmills

As you look around my site, you will probably notice that as well as including plenty of photos of my own, I also have extensive links to photos that are provided by photo hosting sites, such as flickr, and Picasa Web Albums.

In some cases, particular windmills are such popular subjects that these sites have many hundreds of photos of the same windmill. As a case in point, probably the most popularly photographed windmill is the Dutch Windmill in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. (A number of factors contribute to its popularity - being at one end of Silicon Valley it's seen by a huge number of web and digital camera literate people - precisely the people who contribute to photo sharing sites, and the rarity of windmills in California, and the huge tourist draw of the area are additional factors.)

Another (mock) windmill with a huge tourist draw is the Moulin Rouge in Paris - who doesn't take a photo of this landmark when they visit Paris?

The incredible number of photos of these mills can be a problem - navigating and inspecting them is not easy. Another photo site, Panoramio, has just introduced a clever method of viewing multiple photos of the same subject, which they call "Look around". A few good examples of windmills using this method are:

• Dutch windmill, Golden Gate Park
• Moulin Rouge, Paris
• Moulin Rouge, Paris - night shots
• Moulin Radet, Paris
• Mykonos, Greece
• Kinderdijk

I did find some UK mills that are available using this method, but they have much smaller datasets:

• Lytham
• Bidston
• Bidston
• Brill
• Clifton
• Clifton
• Bembridge
• Blennerville
• Lytham
• Horsey
• Langstone
• Langstone
• Leith
• Melin Llynnon

On a technical note, windmills are not ideal for this photo matching - the essence of a fully functional windmill is that it is a machine that moves, which can make for some incorrect matches. For example the pair of photos of Heckington mill have been matched so that the 8 sails are correlated - but the two images are taken when the cap had rotated to face different compass directions, so the bits of the tower being matched do not agree with each other. The Brill images also seem to turn the mill upside down to match the two images which were taken from different sides of the mill together, and the Blennerville pair seems to do something similar.

• Heckington
• Brill
• Blennerville

• Melin Llynnon

Mills at Disney World

Tom Sawyer's Island has both a windmill, and a watermill. The windmill is accurately modelled with just 3 sails at the moment, and the watermill called Harper's Mill has a few additional details such as a barrel and a raft outside.

There is also a mock windmill at the pool of the Stormaway Bay Disney Beach Club.

Perhaps surprisingly, there do not appear to be any mills included within Epcot, Disney's park that (amongst other things) showcases buildings from around the world.

Daniels mill waterwheel turning once again

After the severe flooding in the area last year, the huge 40ft diameter waterwheel at Daniels Mill, Bridgenorth has been out of action. Following work by Adam Marriott, the wheel is once again turning, and work on the pentrough and stone nuts should soon result in all 3 pairs of stones being back working very soon.

Check out these videos of the the wheel turning and the stones in action.

Colourful interior of Little Marton

Little Marton windmill was open over the National Mills Weekend, and Shirley Matthews of the Friends of Little Marton Windmill has sent me some photos of the colourful interior of the mill, where the remaining iron machinery is painted in bright primary colours.

The original memorial plaque on the inside of the mill is shown, of which there is a replica on the outside of mill. The red hawthorn is for Allan Clarke's little son Frank Allen who drowned in a clay pit aged 7.

SPAB Mills Section plaque awarded to Jill mill

Millstones at Holgate mill

Smock framing at Ockley windmill

• construction of the attached traditional granary (including a portion on saddle stones)
• considerable making good of the smock base (including new lintels, new brickwork, all existing brickwork repointed)
• delivery of the iron windshaft
• installation of oak sills

Sails removed from Lowfield Heath mill

Llancayo windmill progress

Photos of Marton mill

Thanks to Daniel Stretton, I can show you some photos of the broken sail at Marton Mill, Lancashire.

Windmill sails

• The dummy sails installed on Wray Common windmill, Reigate, are made from LVL (laminated veneer lumber). Timber Trades Journal notes that the material, Kerto S LVL by Finnforrest is lighter and more durable than solid timber.
• Marton windmill, damaged in recent gales, is to have its sails repaired. The wood will likely be sourced from Europe.

WindmillLand - Promoting the works of Allen Clarke

• In a fairy region
• Staining windmill

Mills Open Weekend 2008

Ideas for house converting Craggs mill, Preston

Beard Mill, Oxfordshire

Encyclopedia entries on windmills

• windmill
• energy conversion :: windmills

• The introduction of the windpump in America is ascribed to David Hallay in the 2nd article (an error Rex Wailes would not have made), whereas the first has it as Daniel Hallady. The name is in fact normally given as Daniel Halladay.
• The articles variously refer to post mills and tower mills as both two words, and as the hyphenated post-mill and tower-mill
• The fantail is described as driving on to a track on the ground, which whilst true for post mills, is hardly the normal arrangement which simply turns the cap into the wind by driving onto the curb.
• The further reading suggestions include "Euclid's Windmill" and "tumble windmill grass", both of which are totally irrelevant to the subject, but match only in name.

Turning windmills into houses

Llancayo windmill in Wales was a derelict and roofless tower, which has now been rendered and turned into a spacious home. The roof of the tower is totally wrong (and I've no idea what the Jolly Roger is doing there), but the gallery around the mill looks fairly authentic, and given the state of the tower when this started, this may have been the best outcome for the building.

On the other hand, Frettenham tower mill in Norfolk, had been maintained in reasonable condition for years, being roofed (with an unauthentic cap it must be said) and still retains machinery. The conversion work here seems to be starting with the attached buildings, which are being converted into a number of dwellings - let's hope that that means that they will leave the mill largely alone, and in particular preserve all the remaining machinery it contains. However, the very fact that this is now incorporated into a private housing development means that even if preserved, these remains become inaccessible. A far from ideal outcome for this particular mill.

Pontoon construction at Hardley drainage mill

North Leverton mill to open on a regular basis again