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Geograph provides a great resource for photos of Britain and Ireland, and as such many pages on this site are improved by photos from its collection. In fact, the photo number at Geograph just reached the 2,000,000 mark, which is a great achievement.
Since the Channel Islands are not covered by the current "Britain and Ireland" site, there's a new (beta) site specifically for the Channel Islands.
There aren't that many photos on the site yet, just 387 as I write, (and indeed as a small area it's never going to rival that of the original!), but the mill ones I can find are:
It's probably also worth noting that there look to be plans to split the database, so that the site for Ireland (which is currently simply an alternative view into the shared Britain and Ireland database) actually becomes its own separate entity. In addition there is also an otherwise unrelated site that uses the Geograph software that covers Germany (with currently around 12,500 images). A search there for windmill in English returns 7 images, with 15 images in the windmühle category, and 36 classified as mühle.
This is not a review, since I don't have an iPhone, but I was interested to see that there is an app available on the phone that provides a guide to the windmills of the Netherlands. Perhaps it's a reflection of the iPhone name's mixed capitalization, but it uses the word WindMills, with a capital M in the middle which I find slightly annoying (and refers to Holland when it really means the whole of the Netherlands).
To quote the app description:
Living Mills of Holland
The renowned Dutch filmmaker Menno Mennes has been involved with the Dutch culture and history since 2007. Much of his unique material is made available in the WindMills iPhone app.
As no other he succeeds to record pictures about the Dutch Heritage with a lot of athmosphere. With passion and true professionalism Menno Mennes films in the style of our old painters!
Now you have the opportunity to see the most beautiful WindMills of Holland, on-line on your iPhone with much detailed information.
The app contains windmills of the Kinderdijk, Schermerhorn, the Zaanse Schans and many more... including the windmills painted by Vincent van Gogh.
The collection consists of a unique selection of mills of all Dutch provinces with detailed information (pictures and video). You have the option to select and display the route (often with Street View) from your current location or from a selected province. Also, the weather forecast for that day, evening and next day will be shown.
The data for your location is fully configurable with distances within a radius of 5, 10, 25 or 50 km. You can make selections by province or type of mill sorted by location and distance.
You find background information about the mill, the location, date of construction, category, type and usage, opening hours to the public and if the mill is still operational.
The WindMills app can be configured for the languages Dutch, English, German, French Spanish and Italian.
The Dutch landscape with its mills are inextricably linked to each other. After all, Holland owes its prosperity to these splendid machines…
The Polder draining-mills kept people's feet dry and the industrial mills made Holland flourish in the 17th century.
Mills are and will always be the icons, the landmarks of Holland, attracting year after year hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world.
The fact that there are still mills is in a way surprising. About 100 years ago, thousands of mills were pulled down (because there was need anymore for them) and it was feared that there soon wouldn't be any left at all.
However, thanks to the efforts of the association of Dutch Mills, founded in 1923, many mills have been saved from an inglorious end. This why at present, in 2009, some 1,100 wind and water mills still grace the Dutch skyline. However, the association alone cannot keep these monuments alive...it needs help…
Volunteers keep the mills in working order and they deserve all our respect. Without these volunteers most of today’s mills would be lost within ten years.
In the near future more iPhone apps on several Dutch cultural heritage will follow. Subjects will be: old fishing-villages, ancient craft, large flower parades: Holland at its very best.
Windmill photos by Alan Derwent CastonI have been sent some quite spectacular images of windmills, taken by Alan Derwent Caston, probably in the 1930s. The images are unlabelled, and since they come from negatives, some may have been reversed. I've only so far identified some of them - identifications of the others are most welcome. Alan lived in Ilford, and Essex mills certainly feature in the selection.
To see the images please go to the Caston Collection page. My thanks to Alan's daughter Stella, who sent me the images.
Update:[3/4/10] I have received a number of further batches from this collection as they have been found. My error - these are mostly being scanned from negatives, not slides, but there are also now a few lower quality images which have come from prints. There are now 47 images in total.
National Trust Library Slow progress on Murphy windmill reconstruction
Work on the reconstruction of the Murphy windmill in Golden Gate Park seems to have slowed down, or perhaps
even come to a complete stop. Thanks to Johan Bastiaens who sent me these photos that he took on 20th Feb 2010,
there does not seem to have been any visible progress since the scaffolding went up around the old base in June 2008.
His pictures also capture the billboard which shows the original construction photo of the mill in 1905.
Website for Impington millThere's a new website for Impington mill, put together by the owners Steve and Pippa Temple.
Of particular interest are the pages covering the mill through the ages and restoration since 2000 both of which are well illustrated.
UK Wheat Milled and Flour ProductionIt's not a particularly catchy title, "UK Wheat Milled and Flour Production", and somewhat ambiguous, but the fact that I've been able to access this document is part of a significant breakthrough. That breakthrough is the release of large amounts of UK government data via the just launched UK Public Sector information and data site data.gov.uk.
A search there for "windmill" turns up nothing, but for "mill" leads to the page about the dataset, and from there on to the Defra host page for the data, and the PDF containing the latest figures. The data is made available under Crown Copyright, which is aligned to be interoperable with Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.
As for the figures themself, they relate to commercial milling - 2.5 million tonnes of wheat milled, producing 2 million tones of flour between July and November 2009. The flour production is split into
The "lost" windmill of ForthamptonThe locations of the remains of windmills in the UK are generally well known, with detailed lists produced by The Mills Research Group, The Mills Archive, and other groups and individuals who cover their own local areas.
Just occasionally something escapes being covered by those lists, and that seems to be the case with the windmill at Forthampton in Gloucestershire, whose base still remains, converted into a building known locally as "The Round House".
Just a few days ago, a photo of "The Round House" by Bob Embleton was posted at the Geograph website, where the caption noted that this (largely obscured by trees) building was the converted base of Alcock's windmill.
A little more detail on the mill is provided by 'Parishes: Forthampton', A History of the County of Gloucester: volume 8 (1968), pp. 196-208 which records that:
...in the same part of the parish is the Round House, comprising the base of Alcock's windmill, a building of the local shaly stone, with a 19th-century brick cottage beside it.
No record has been found of a water-mill in the parish. Tewkesbury Abbey had two windmills there in 1291. The mill mentioned in 1636 may have been the windmill worked by John Alcock in 1649 and 1672, which survived in 1859 as Alcock's Mill ¼ mile ESE. of Alcock's Farm, and the base of which was later called the Round House.
National Trust properties on Google StreetView "Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life" - William Stukeley 1752they remember particularly, that a new windmill, about that time, was set up in the way to Gunnerby; which is now demolished. a windmill is a sort of rarity in this country, abounding so much with rivers, & brooks: for which reason they chiefly use watermills. a walk to this new windmil was the usual amusement of the town of Grantham. the multitude return'd with some satisfaction to thir curiosity, but little improvement in thir understanding, & it was the comon rendezvous of the schoolboys. Newton's innate fire was soon excited, he penetrated beyond the superficial view of the thing. he was daily with the workmen, carefully observed the progress, the manner of every part of it, & the connexion of the whole. he obtain'd so exact a notion of the mechanism of it, that he made a true, & perfect model of it, in wood. & it was said to be as clean a piece of workmanship, as the original. this sometime he would fasten upon the housetop, where he lodged: & clothing it with bits of cloth, for sails, the wind would readily take it. but Isaac was not content with this bare imitation: his spirit prompted him to goe beyond his prototype. & he added an extraordinary composition to it. he could put a mouse into it, which work'd it as naturally as the wind. this he used to style his mouse-miller. & complain'd jokingly, what a thief he was; for he eat up all the corn put into the mill. I made inquiry, what they knew concerning the art, & contrivance of it. some said, he ty'd a string to the mouse, & pulling by it, made the mouse turn the mill. some said, the mouse ran round a wheel like that of a turnspit: and that the hopper emptyed it self with the ground corn in his sight; therefore it always endevord to come to it, & then turn'd the wheel. however it was a piece of diversion, to not a little part of the town & country, to pay a visit to Isaac's mouse miller, & the farmers readily supplyd him with handfuls of corn, on market days.These details come on the pages labelled 34, facing 35, 35, 36. The full memoirs are transcribed at The Newton Project. Stukeley refined his text over many years - an earlier version of the same windmill story was included in a version of the memoirs set to Richard Mead in 1727 (just weeks after Newton's death), and now in the Kings College Library, Cambridge. This version reads:
about this time a new windmill was set up near Grantham in the way to Gunnerby, which is now demolished, this country chiefly using watermills. our lads imitating spirit was soon excited & by frequently prying into the fabric of it, as they were making it, he became master enough to make a very perfect model thereof, & it was said to be as clean & curious a piece of workmanship as the original. this sometime he would set upon the house top where he lodg'd, & clothing it with sailcloth the wind would readily take it. but what was most extraordinary in its composition, was, that he put a mouse into it which he calld the miller, & that the mouse made the mill turn round, when he pleasd, & he would joke too upon the miller eating the corn that was put in. some say he tyd a string to the mouses tail, which was put into a wheel like that of turnspit dogs, so that pulling the string made the mouse goe forward by way of resistance, & this turn'd the mill. others suppose there was some corn plac'd above the wheel, this the mouse endeavoring to get to, made it turn.Again a full transcription is available at The Newton Project.
Flags over Historic Mills - Canadian definitive stamps Geograph photo archive now accepting larger images A technical article on identifying images Benin windmill stamps (cinderellas)Our unit has checklists of hundreds of stamps showing mills of most types. In addition to genuine stamps, there have also been printed considerable numbers of "cinderella" stamps of mills, being invalid postally, but picturesque and interesting nevertheless. There have been a number of attractive sheetlets purported to have been issued by the African country of Benin, showing paintings of mill scenes (including some printed back-to-front!) by a number of artists which we have identified; however, I attach a half-dozen which so far are unknown to us and I was wondering therefore whether you could kindly add them to your website with a request that we would like to know the location of the mills, the artists, and if possible where the paintings are exhibited. The mills shown on no. 5 are clearly the Moulin de la Galette and the Moulin Radet in Montmartre but I'm not sure about the artist. I would guess Maurice Utrillo.
Update:
I've managed to identify all the stamp images as follows:
Updated welcome page at the Mills ArchiveThe items on the Mill Archive welcome page now include:
Vintage advertisments featuring millsA browse around showed some interesting mill related results (though linking to individual items seems to be problematic - the best I've come up with is to use very specific search strings):
flickr windmill photos taken on an iphone SPAB Mills events for 2010 Planning application for Bradleys Mill, Speldhurst, KentNote that there seems to be a problem with the planning website at the moment, but I assume that it will be sorted out when the working week starts again."I recently went down to Bradleys Mill, Speldhurst, near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and was alarmed to find it fenced off, as if ready for redevelopment or conversion.
The mill itself is a good example of a West Kent/Sussex village corn mill, and remains internally complete, although the waterwheel has deteriorated markedly since it ceased work just over thirty years ago. The structure itself is in good condition.
A recent enquiry to Speldhurst Parish Council, has revealed that in 2008, the mill was subjected to two planning applications, the first of which was for conversion into a house, retaining the basic machinery. This was allowed without too much fuss. The first application was clearly a dummy run, as a month later a second application was entered, which wanted to convert the mill as above, and provide seven new homes. This was rejected, on environmental grounds, and also that the new development would have been a hazard for bus routes turning in from the main road.
I've just been alerted to a third application, which is a revised application of the second one, and includes a comprehensive traffic study. This was submitted on the 16th December, and can be objected to at this website :- http://pa.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/dcapplication/application_searchform.aspx You need to submit application reference 09/4000/1527 into the top box.
I have been alerted to this by concerned villagers and/or the parish council, who are keenish to see a different use for the mill. Perhaps even preservation. With the Kent Mills Society in its infancy, I've recently been looking at a few sites in Kent, and one thing that has become apparent is the shocking amount of conversion and development that has been allowed in the last twenty years.
Please take a moment to object to this if you can. The application is up for review I think on the 2nd January."
Pictures of Holgate cap, now in place
Paul Hepworth, of Holgate Windmill Preservation Society
continues to keep me updated with the latest good news of Holgate windmill.
His latest images show, in order, the new cap being painted, transported, lifted in to place on Sat 28th Nov 2009,
and a snowy scene taken on 17th Dec 2009.
How to paint a windmillJust came across these instructions on How to paint a windmill which amused me. (To avoid doubt, this is about how an artist captures an image of the windmill on paper - not how to apply a protective layer of paint to a windmill to keep the weather out!).
What the steps boil down to are:
Unidentified windmill fire
I have been sent this photo of a post card apparently showing a windmill on fire, with the following explanation:
"I have this photo in an old album which I picked up in junk shop. Any idea where it may be from, the family had connections near Bury St Edmunds, and in Hartest, Glomsford and Boxted Suffolk,part of the family lived Putney, London area and in High Wycombe. Sadly there is not any writing on the reverse only made out as photo postcard, divided back."
Can anyone help identify the mill?
Ibstone windmill in Day of the Triffids Christmas Series of Victorian FarmThe first programme in the Christmas Series of Victorian Farm, featuring Alex Langlands, Ruth Goodman and Peter Ginn, aired at 9pm on Friday 11th December on BBC2.
This programme includes milling scenes at Wilton Windmill with Alex, Ruth and some of the Wilton Windmill Society's members. Ruth and Alex joined the millers in May this year to film the scenes for the programme. If you are watching this on iPlayer, the segment starts in the 27th minute of the recording.
| Last updated 14/08/2010 | Text and images © Mark Berry, 1997-2010 - |