Mill news, topical information, and blog posts 🌍

Ignore the "photo" in this article, since it's AI generated, but Between two Japanese islands a tidal turbine on the seabed is sending 1.1 megawatts ashore through a single cable is an interesting read about a tidal turbine in the Naru Strait, in the Goto Islands off Nagasaki, Japan. This second generation turbine (replacing a 500kW that was end of life'd in 2021) is rated at 1.1MW, and came online in 2025. It was built in the UK, and has 3 carbon fibre blades - this was apparently chosen over steel, because a broken carbon blade sinks, so is not a shipping hazard. (The reasoning here is not explained - I can't immediately see why a steel blade would instead float!)

The article makes a couple of further points

1. Since tides are predictable, you can be sure of the output this turbine will generate, even decades ahead, eliminating the need for storage and backup enegy sources if the weather does no cooperate
2. Actually tides are not ideal - since they change direction, and have slack periods. An even greater gaol is harnessing the ocean currents that flow just as predictably, but in a single direction, moving huge quantities of water

With news that there is more restoration work planned for Halnaker windmill, I thought it useful to document the last round of restoration in 2017, as covered by Sussex World published on 9/10/17. It noted then that:

• work had been completed to replace the tiled exterior and repair the white cap and balconies
• refitting sails (sweeps) and the door were supposedly held off till Spring [Note: the sweeps were not placed back on the mill]
• the mill had been fenced off since May 2013 after vandals brought down an internal beam, and investigations at the time uncovered other defects including loose tiles, and a failing "spar" [not sure exactly what is meany by this term]

When subsequently linking back to that news report, Sussex World adds the additional information that the refurbishment was done by Fowlers, and cost £137,000.

West Sussex County Council have just approved a £0.5M + VAT contract "to conserve and restore in part" Halnaker windmill. The contract has been awarded to Fowlers Building Contractors Ltd, who were the firm who did the last lot of work on the mill, back in 2017 when the lime render was repaired, and new tiles hung on the tower.

However, I can't find what the actual works planned are (though I have reached out to the Council for more information). No planning application has been submitted, and there are no supporting documents about the decision on the council website. Since the decision was individually decided by Andrew Edwards, Service Director of Property and Assets, there was no meeting to minute. I'm pleased that in these days of pressure on council spending, the decision notes that "Not supporting the project was rejected due to Heritage Conservation obligations."

The mill does not have sails on it at the moment, so restoring those may well be in the plan, but that shouldn't cost the full approved budget.

A blog post Daniel Halladay and His Windmill: Researching Lesser Told Histories has been posted on the Library of Congress blog. It's authored by 2026 Junior Fellow Maile McCall, and tries to uncover a little of the personal history of Daniel Halladay, rather than the history of his inventions and company. Ultimately it doesn't uncover much - a few newspaper mentions including his obituary, but no journals or personal correspondence that would have given deeper insights in to his life.

For the record, the pertinent facts on Daniel Halladay include:

• born on November 24, 1826, in Marlboro, VT
• early career included work as a mechanic's apprentice and installing machinery at the U.S. government armoury at Harper's Ferry, before settling in Ellington, Connecticut
• Original windmill patent number 11,629 granted August 29, 1854, reissued as 4,064, to extend for 7 more years from July 5, 1870
• Formed the Halladay Windmill Company, which moved first to Chicago, then to Batavia, where the company operated as the U.S. Wind Engine and Pump Company
• Improved windmill covered by patent 190,430 on May 8, 1877
• Later moved to Santa Ana, CA, where he became a banker and financier
• Died March 1, 1916, at the age of 89, leaving an estate of $147,000

It's a while since I've noticed a magazine cover with a subject relevant to this site, so I was initially pleased to see that the July 2026 issue of Physics World magazine has a couple of wind turbines shown on its cover. However on closer inspection, I see this is to my mind a pretty terrible cover - this is not a photo of real wind turbines, but instead is a very crude computer drawing of turbines, comprised of lines and poorly shaded triangles. From the credit inside the magazine, I traced the source to this Shutterstock image. It looks as if they simply did a search of stock photos for wind turbine and solar panels, and took the first image it came up with.

The cover image accompanies an interior feature titled "What physicists can do to support the green economy". This feature itself is a further recycling of existing material - it's a set of edited extracts from a panel debate held at the Institute of Physics in London.

As of today, a search of the Wikimedia Commons for windmill returns 79,878 images, which is a respectable size result. (This ignores the fact that a keyword search may in fact bring up results that are not actually of windmills - normally picking up on place names that include the word). However, not all the images are original to Wikimedia - a sizeable proportion have been copied there from other freely usable photo archives. In particular, if you repeat the search excluding Geograph then the number drops to 66,929, so 12,949 images representing 16% of the total have simply been harvested (as the Geograph licence allows) from that other archive.

Other Archive	number	percent	notes
Geograph	12949	16%	UK geolocated images
flickr	4881	6%	photo sharing site
Panoramio	2386	3%	defunct geophoto site from Google
David Rumsey	1848	2%	maps, but also general engravings
DPLA	1753	2%	many digitized patents
Library of Congress	975	1%
New York Public Library	125	0.1%	includes a collection of stereocards
Finnish Heritage Agency	98	0.1%

There are probably more external archives contributing to the Wikipedia Commons number as well. An alternative way to determine a more accurate number of original images in the archive is to include "own work" in the search, which returns about 24000 images. Many of the images in the archive get used on Wikipedia pages, but by no means all of them - some people simply use the Commons as a way to publish their own photos with no particular use case in mind.

Since we can search via recency, we can see what has been added recently to the Commons, of which the following caught my eye:

• Crowd of people witnessing the 2026 solar eclipse at Brill Windmill
• 10 images of Wray Common windmill in July 2026
• 100's of images from the now out of copyright Watermills and Windmills by William Coles Finch
• 72 images from English Windmills v1 by I M Batten, 1930
• A significant upload from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) including many digitized patents
• An upload from the Finnish Heritage Agency

A survey on London's art neighbourhoods alerted me to the mural Big Splash painted by Christine Thomas on the wall of 20 Strathleven Road, Brixton in 1985. It shows an overshot waterwheel on the side of a building, where people are looking out from the windows and deck, and more people are bathing in the lower millpond, which is surrounded by foliage and birdlife. According to Brixton Murals it represents the now hidden river Effra.

Brixton windmill has been represented sequentially by 2 locals murals in Lyham Road. The earlier one by Mick Harrison and Caroline Thorp, was created in 1983, but had faded and become damaged, so was painted over by a new design by Positive Arts in May 2012, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Parts of the original composition around the edge were recreated, but the central view of the mill differs. The sails shown on the mural are very inaccurate!

Don't expect great accuracy (after all it's produced by the notoriously inaccurate QI elves, who consider that a quick web search counts as being "research"), but there's a fairly entertaining bit about wind turbines and windmills at the start of a recent episode of No Such Thing as a Fish entitled No such thing as half past purple.

They start by talking about the wind turbine installed in 1941 at Grandpa's Knob, Vermont, then mention mass produced wind engines widely used in America (though say they were used for grinding corn on farms, when they were mostly for pumping water). A question on "is there a society to do with wind turbines and windmills" gets the reply of not having found one (I said their research was shallow!), and the language of windmill sails (mourning, celebration etc) is covered, but not explained very clearly. A ramble around the direction of rotation of wind turbines is concluded with a mention of the Betz limit of how much power can be extracted from the wind. Finally there's coverage of James Blyth's pioneering work, though his 1887 wind turbine was certainly not the first to generate electricity.

Via a Facebook post on Windmill Hoppers, millwright Tim Whiting informs us that Saxtead Green post mill trestle has become very unsafe, and that quick works have taken place to secure the mill. To reduce the weight on the buck, the sails have been removed, and the buck is held up by guy lines.

The dramatic events started with the discovery of a loose chunk of oak on the floor, which lead to finding that one quarterbar had burst its mortice. Within a week a second quarterbar did the same, and soon there was a massive crack in the main post - described by Tim as making the trestle essentially "a snapped carrot". Planning is taking place to lift the buck off of the post.

The Octopus Energy Tech Summit took place in Battersea Park on 22th June 2026. There about 4000 delegates heard from a variety of business and political leaders, talking about energy. Whilst Octopus is amongst other things a gas supplier, the geopolitical environment, and the record breaking temperatures we are currently experiencing had all sides agreeing that electrification of our energy usage is where we need to be.

The subject of wind turbines got coverage in various ways

• the outside area was dominated by "Fat Boy Spin", which is one of a number of small, essentially portable wind turbines, that Octopus use at things such as festivals and temporary installations, to provide green power to these events. The turbine was also present last year, but the local council had refused permission for it to be producing electricity. Similarly this year no permission was given, and although the tips of the turbine blades were turned to act as air brakes, the hub was not locked, so at times when the wind was cooperating, the turbine was slowly turning.
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, with Battersea power station chimneys visible behind, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, showing banners below, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, as Octopus plushies were distributed to the attendees, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, with an octopus tentacle, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• The banners at the base of the turbine gave a potted, and not strictly accurate "History of wind turbines..."
  

  Banner giving an approximate history of wind turbines at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• Inside by the Nerd Shack there was an even tinier wind turbine, which I take was non-functional, just for decoration!
  

  Interior decorative wind turbine by the Nerd Shack at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• Much of the furniture in the top floor rest area consisted of upcycled wind turbine blades
  

  Chill out furniture at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, made from upcycled wind turbine blades, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• One of the sessions was a fireside chat with William Kamkwamba, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", covering the story of his scratch built wind turbine, which is now subject of a West End musical by the RSC.
  

  William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, being interviewed by Zoisa North-Bond at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• This was followed by a video update on Octopus' first wind farm in Africa, which has been built in collaboration with Idris Elba's foundation. Sierra Leone wind farm

William Kamkwamba's story has become well known over time, in diverse forms including

• TED talks
• a documentary short - Moving Windmills
• an international bestselling autobiography "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind"
• a Netfix movie, (IMBD coverage)

and now it has been adapted into a musical by the RSC, which had a short initial run at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, before transferring to SohoPlace in London.

The basic story is that William was a boy in Malawi who gets thrown out of school because his family cannot pay the fees. However his interest in learning continues, and he manages to get some library access, and sees pictures of wind turbines. When famine arrives at his village, he designs and builds a windmill from scrap material (but also including his father's bike which is needed for the dynamo), which saves the village since it generates some electricity which enables the crops to be planted and irrigated in the dry season.

The RSC spent years producing the adaptation, including a field trip for the writers, director, and set designer out to William's village in Wimbe, Malawi to see the windmill still in place in the village. As a result, the windmill that is built on the stage as part of the show is impressive, and superficially looks quite like the original, albeit adapted for quick assembly during the show. It's a real shame therefore, especially given the educational aspect of the story, that the designers have not understood how the turbine works technically, and have produced a facsimile whose sails are shaped to cause the wind to turn them one way, but the motor they use to turn them in the show rotates them the wrong way.

With the opening of his Centre for Illustration which includes the windmill at Clerkenwell, I was interested to research whether Quentin Blake had drawn much in the way of windmills in his illustrations. I discovered he had produced at least the following

• Don Quixote lifted from his horse by the sail of a windmill
• Sancho Panza and Dapple approach the windmills
• The book The Mouse Troubles with John Yeoman, which features many mice living in a windmill
• A wind engine, illustrated in either "Sarah Plain and Tall" or "Huckleberry Finn"

As of the 5th June 2026, the Quentin Blake centre for Illustration will be open at the former Thames Water site at Clerkenwell. The centre has been created from the various buildings on the site, namely

• the Engine House with a library on the ground floor, a temporary gallery on the first, and the Quentin Blake gallery on the second
• the Boiler House now converted to a cafe
• the Coal Stores which is the largest art gallery
• the Windmill Base which is to be used for small exhibitions and workshop events

As of the press previews at the start of this week, not everything is in place, for example there are no interpretation boards yet for the historic aspects of the site.

The windmill base has not been substantially changed from its general appearance in recent years, though some work has been done on it. Clearly it has had new electrical fittings, a picture rail installed to attach artwork, and new curved seating and curved worktops have been constructed. The internal walls however retain their original much patched and distressed appearance, and the existing brick built structures inside, whose purpose is uncertain have been retained, even down to the patch of carpet below the window. Early on in the conversion works, the pinnacle of the roof was removed since it was damaged, and this has been reused to form a 6-sailed windmill model or sculpture that will be shown inside. Externally the ugly protective concrete blocks that protected the mill when the yard was home to heavy machinery have now been removed, but the cast iron bollards which do a similar job retained. However, even the simple task of removing the weeds up the walls, and around the base of the area has not been performed. A garden has been planted up to the mill on the north side, and at the preview there was still left over garden landscaping construction materials partly obscuring the mill from the east side. The Thames Water plaque that used to be above the doorway, giving a one sentence history of the mill has been removed. Disabled parking places have been laid out alongside the mill, which when occupied will detract from the sightlines available from the west side.

When not in use for paid workshops, the windmill access will be free of charge. The centre as a whole is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 - 17:00, and the path through the compound passing the windmill is traversable on opening days 09:30 - 17:30.

Having recently reviewed Ian Yearsley's book of the Windmills of Essex, published by Amberley Publishing, I noticed that the publishers have a number of other windmill books in their catalogue. The full set of ones I spotted is

• Windmills of Essex by Ian Yearsley
• Windmills and Watermills of Suffolk by John Ling
• Windmills of Norfolk by John Ling
• Yorkshire Windmills Through Time by Alan Whitworth

There are also a number of books that are not specifically about windmills, but which feature a picture of one on the cover

• Good Honest Tales by Adam Cartwright - book about Batemans Brewery, with a cover showing the windmill tower at the brewery
• Rayleigh Through Time by Mike and Sharon Davies, with a cover showing the windmill in historical and modern views
• Sussex Industrial Heritage by Colin Tyson - showing High Salvington windmill on the cover
• Chilterns at Work by Jill Eyers - showing a heavily obscured Lacey Green windmill on the cover
• A-Z of the Isle of Anglesey by Warren Kovach, with a photo of Melin Llynonn on the cover
• Historic England: Bristol by Simon McNeill-Ritchie, with a cover showing an aerial view of the Clifton suspension bridge, and the old snuff windmill (now an observatory)
• Illustrated Tales of Cornwall by John Husband, with the windmill tower on the Lizard shown on the cover
• Illustrated Tales of Norfolk by John Ling, with a cover showing the windmill ruin at St Bennets Abbey
• Illustrated Tales of Sussex by Christopher Horlock, with a small image of the windmill at Tide Mills on the cover
• Lancashire in Photographs by Jon Sparks, with a photo of Lytham windmill on the cover
• Norfolk Broads The Biography by Pete Goodrum with a skeleton windpump on the cover
• Norfolk Places Behind the Faces by John Ling, with a cover showing Cley-next-the-Sea windmill
• Paranormal Anglesey by Bunty Austin, with a photo of a windmill tower on the cover
• The Broads Through Time by David Holmes, with photos of broads windpumps on the cover

I also saw other mills illustrated on more covers

• 50 Gems of the Cotswolds by David Elder, showing Lower Slaughter mill on the cover
• 50 Gems of County Durham by Derek Dodds, showing the watermill below Durham cathedral on the cover
• Lost Durham by Michael Richardson with a old view of Durham cathedral and watermill
• Paranormal County Durham by Darren W. Ritson, showing Durham watermill on the cover
• Amersham Through Time by Colin J. Seabright, showing old and recent views of an Amersham watermill on the cover
• Derbyshire in Photographs by Richard Beresford, showing an abandoned Derbyshire millstone quarry
• Derwent Valley Mills Through Time by Adrian Farmer, showing textile mills in the Derwent valley
• Sturminster Newton Through Time by Roger Guttridge, Steve Case, with an old and new pair of photos of the White Mill on the cover
• The River Isbourne by Mike Lovatt, with an iron waterwheel shown on the cover

Matt Parker is a popular UK stand-up mathematician with a YouTube channel that covers all sorts of interesting and nerdy subjects. In a recent video (on dithering 2-tone images) he wears a t-shirt emblazoned with 3 colourful wind turbines. With a bit of searching, I tracked this down as being this t-shirt from Rapanui which they note is "Made in a factory powered by wind energy". (There may be some equivocation involved there - they also state "Our products are made from sustainable materials and printed in a renewable energy powered factory" which is not quite the same thing, having a less direct link to the subject matter!) They also have a number of other attractive t-shirts with other wind turbine based designs. There is a dated (from 2019), but still interesting article about Rapanui. (You can see it's dated - they praise Elon Musk as a sustainability shining light; the same Elon who now showers rocket debris polluting areas around his space launches, is destroying our view of the night sky and setting us up for a space junk catastrophe by the huge number of Starlink satellites, and runs huge banks of CO2 producing gas powered generators to power his unsustainable AI ambition, to say nothing of the untold damage his DOGE stint did on environmental matters). As the article says, Rapanui also run the Teemill platform, whereby their sustainable fashion infrastructure can be used by anyone.

When you are writing a book about the mills of a particular area, especially when you make your local credentials clear in the preface, then you set an expectation that you have done your due diligence by making a recent visit to those mills. Thus Ian Yearsley's book, Windmills of Essex sets a strong first impression, by making the cover photo a glorious picture of Fryerning post mill, a mill that is rarely photographed, since it's hidden away in a private garden, not easily visible from outside the property. However, there's no mention inside the book of which mill it is that has pride of place on the cover, nor of the 2 mills pictured on the rear cover, that between them cover the three main mill types, post, smock and tower. In some respects it's no loss that the cover mills are not identified, since these images are not unique - they are repeated inside the book on the pages about the mills they illustrate, but I do feel that that is a missed opportunity - rather than repeat the one Fryerning image already shown on the cover, why not include a different image inside, since it's clear the author had close up access to the mill that few of the book's readers are likely to achieve. Whilst the approach adopted for the surviving windmills of including one recent, and one historic photo is a good one, overall, I feel that the photographs chosen to illustrate the mills throughout the book are a little bit of a let down, The recent photo of Baker Street Mills, Orsett is really a photo of a fence post, with a small windmill visible in the background, and several other photos would have benefited from an alternative angle that avoided obscuring the mill with so much foliage.

As well as "surviving windmills" (which roughly equates to extant full height mills, with or without sails, including conversions), there's a shorter section covering "some lost windmills", which actually mostly covers mills that survive in a truncated (and often converted) form, rather than ones that are truly lost to history. It is notable that in neither section are there any interior photos of the windmills - the closest we get to seeing anything relating to the actual machinery of windmills is the appearance of millstones that have been relocated outside the mills as garden ornaments.

The text that describes each mill is a mixture of a potted history of the mill (this is a lightweight popular history book, so none of the facts are backup up with citations), together with some recent information about recent and (at time of publication) current owners and sometimes their plans for the mill. This I feel is a strong feature of the book, showing that the author has been in contact with many of the mill owners in the course of researching the book, and providing information that the heavyweight historical coverage of the county in Farries is of course unable to provide.

Finally, I should point out that the final very short chapter on modern windmills alerted me to an Essex windmill I'd not come across before - the reduced scale windmill being built on Ashley Cooper's farm in Gestingthorpe. Although there are only 3 sentences about the mill, it does get a March 2025 photo, showing the progress that has been made in the build at that point.

In other mill related interest in the village of Gestingthorpe

• The Wickham Windmill was just south of the village, demolished in 1914. Suffolk & Essex Free Press, November 25th 1914

  THE MILL, WICKHAM ST. PAULS, ESSEX.
  Within 5 miles of Halstead and 4 1/2 miles of Sudbury Stations. (Excellent cartage).
  

  ---

  Important Sale of Heavy OLD OAK TIMBER,
  of exceptionally fine quality and dating from 1685, Weather-board, Bricks, Iron and Lead, arising from the demolishing of the Post Wind Mill, with its usual gear.
  4 PAIRS OF STONES, 4 ft. and 4 ft. 6in .,
  LARGE OAT CRUSHER, by Turner,
  20 h.p. CROSSLEY'S SUCTION GAS ENGINE, Producer, Circulating Tanks, and Pipes Complete. The erection of PORTABLE GRANARY, ENGINE HOUSE, and RANGE OF CART SHEDS, which ...

• Bordering Gestingthorpe to the North-West was Belchamp Windmill whose base still remains
• Henry Cook lived in the village, He worked the Grain Mill at Belchamp Walter, despite having separately lost both of his hands in accidents aged 9 and 16. Halstead Gazette, December 18th 1940

  Our obituary column last week recorded the death of Mr Henry Cook which took place at St Michael's Hospital, Braintree, on November 30th, at the age of 77 years.

  He was a native of Gestingthorpe and resided in that parish for most of his life, being admitted to hospital about three years ago. For three weeks previous to his death he was confined to his bed.

  Mr Cook was well known in the district to which he belonged. From his early years he was afflicted, having the misfortune to lose both hands and portions of his arms to within two inches of his elbow. The first accident occurred when he nine years of age and was helping to cut corn. Then when he was sixteen he lost his left hand while employed at a steam chaff cutter.

  Many men would have despaired of not being able to work after this double misfortune, but Mr Cook, horrified at the idea of becoming a pauper, persevered and with the help of friends was fitted with "iron hands" by a London firm. Later, publicity resulted in new equipment, known as "bottle arms", being fitted by the Surgical Aid Society, straps being utilized for fixing the arms by the shoulders.

  Gradually he found he could adapt his “hook” hands to various jobs, and after a while he took over complete charge of a small flour mill at Belchamp Walter, then he found the hook convenient for opening the furnace door, gripping the sack when the corn had to be hoisted to the hopper. In the case of shovelling, a leather "eye" at the handle of the shovel enabled him to place the right hook in the eye and the other in the centre of the handle, the force being supplied by the right, whilst he lifted by the left. By this means he claimed he could shovel with anyone. In the same way he was able to do gardening and was able to stack.

  He drove carts to the market and eventually learned to drive a traction engine, his "hands" he said were well suited to the steering wheel. In an interview some years ago he did not question his ability to drive a traction engine from Belchamp to Bermondsey, Mr Cook was able to fill and light his own pipe and at mealtimes he unscrewed a combined knife and fork in place of the hook; for drinking he had to place his lips on the edge of the cup, balance it and drink. When half empty, he to grip the cup with his teeth and drink in that fashion. He was also able to ride a tricycle and for writing he had to unscrew one of his hooks and stick a fairly thick pencil in the cavity. Despite his great handicap, his will power and ingenuity enabled him to enjoy life and to use his own words he "was as happy as any man in the parish".

It's an interesting village for mills - you guessed it, Gestingthorpe is also the site of one or more relocated wind engines for pumping water. One wind pump has been restored and now circulates the water in the Hill Farm fish pond.

Facebook posts

• April 2016
• July 2016
• Nov 2016
• March 2017
• April 2017
• May 2017

Other wind pumps:

• There also seems to be a portable wind pump - here it is at the village hall! This may be the one that showed up on Google streetview.
• Wind Pump which used to stand outside Crouch House in Moat Street - not sure if this is the same as either of the fish pond or the "portable" wind engines!

Whilst looking for more info on the new post mill being built at Hill Farm, Gestingthorpe, I came across info on a replica Saxon watermill that was built by the Gestingthorpe History Group in the period 2015-18.

Reconstructed Saxon watermill, on Belchamp Brook which runs along the north edge of Hill Farm. There are some inaccuracies in the writeup - the type of waterwheel it uses is a horizontal waterwheel, (not a vertical one). Also features in YouTube videos The Saxon Water Mill and Gestingthorpe Saxon Mill test.

The whole build was documented in a long series of Facebook posts

• April 2015
• April 2015
• April 2015
• May 2015
• May 2015
• June 2015
• June 2015
• July 2015
• July 2015
• July 2015
• Aug 2015
• Aug 2015
• Oct 2015
• Dec 2015
• Dec 2015
• Jan 2016
• Jan 2016
• Feb 2016
• March 2016
• April 2016
• May 2016
• June 2016
• July 2016
• July 2016
• July 2016
• August album
• August 2016
• June 2017
• Nov 2017
• Nov 2017
• March 2018
• May 2018

Via the new book, on the Windmills of Essex by Ian Yearsley, buried in the last 2 page chapter on modern windmills, I have learnt of the existence of a new post mill, being built at Gestingthorpe. The book shows a photo of the mill from March 2025, illustrating a small, somewhat primitive post mill, with a unpainted boxy buck with a pitched roof, on an open trestle standing on low brick built piers, turned to wind by a tailpole, and with a short ladder at the back. There appears to be a small roofed window at the top, rear of the buck, but no windshaft is showing at the front. The accompanying text notes that this is being built by millwright Chris Moulton, in collaboration with farm landowner Ashley Cooper, and the project built using local material is expected to take 6 years in all.

There's a video from August 2023 showing the main post being erected.

Via the documents in the planning application - Erection of timber agricultural post mill more details are given:

• The post mill is 3/4 scale, based roughly on Bourn mill, and designed to mill small quantities of grain produced on the farm
• Hill Farm, on which it is sited, has many existing historical features including traditional buildings, a roman museum, and exhibits about farming
• There are 3 Grade II listed buildings; Hill Farm Barn (List UID: 1168123), Hill Farm Outbuilding (List UID:1123077), and Hill Farm Cartlodge (List UID: 1168137)
• Other projects on the farm have included archaeological digs, a pot kiln, and more
• The Suffolk Mills Group have been consulted about siting of the mill, and other aspects of the design
• A reduced scale was chosen to reduce strain on some joints of the structure, and to minimize impact on the surroundings
• Much of the construction timber is coming from woodlands already on the farm, and construction is being done inside existing farm buildings
• The overall finish is of black stained weatherboarding

The "air" referred to in the name "Mills on the Air" is not so much the moving air that makes up the wind that powers windmills, but rather refers to the airwaves over which radio travels. Thus Mills on the Air (MOTA) is an event where amateur radio operators run radio stations at mills throughout the UK, and indeed across the world. It takes place on National Mills Weekend, and thus this year is on 9th and 10th May, 2026.

Whilst some of the radio stations may be set up inside the mills themselves, the more usual arrangement is for the radio simply to be operated from the vicinity of the mill. The mill itself may not actually be open as part of National Mills Weekend, or if it is, may well have different opening times than the operating time of the radio station.

See the list of stations taking part in the event in 2026. When I last checked, there were 59 UK mills, and 40 spread across the rest of the world.

A few years ago, Jan Smith purchased an album of windmill photos by an unknown photographer. She recently posted them on Windmill Hoppers, and has graciously allowed me to give them a permanent home here.

In years gone by, SPAB, who organize National Mills Weekend, published a comprehensive list of mills that were due to open over the weekend, in fact there was a whole website they dedicated to that information. However that website now appears to be owned by a cyber squatter, and although much of the mills info is still present, it is vastly out of date (last updated in 2018), and the site is set up to link to a casino.

The following is a far from comprehensive list of mills that I'm aware of that will be open for National Mills Weekend 2026. This information may be incorrect - please make your own local enquiries especially if travelling a long distance. Most of this information has come from the Facebook groups Windmill Hoppers and Watermill Hoppers.

• High Salvington windmill - open Sunday 10th, 14:30
• Finchingfield windmill - open Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th, 14:00 - 17:00
• Burwell windmill - open Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Ashdon windmill - open Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Toft Monks Wind Pump - open Saturday 9th, 11:00 - 15:00
• Bourn windmill - open Saturday 9th 14:00 - 16:30, Sunday 10th 11:00 - 13:00 and 14:00 - 16:30
• Ullesthorpe Windmill - open Sunday 10th, 11:00 - 16:00
• Polegate windmill - open Sunday 10th, 11:00 - 15:00
• White mill, Sandwich - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Drapers mill, Margate - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, 14:00 - 16:00
• Kibworth Harcourt windmill - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Upminster windmill - open Saturday 9th 10:00 - 16:00, Sunday 10th 11:00 - 16:00
• Northfield windmill, Soham - open Saturday 9th, 11:00 - 15:00
• Thaxted windmill - open Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 15:30
• Fosters mill, Swaffham Prior - open Sunday 10th, 14:00 - 17:00
• Smock mill, Swaffham Prior - grounds access Sunday 10th, 14:00 - 17:00
• Meopham windmill - open Sunday 10th, 13:30 - 16:30
• Danzey Green windmill, Avoncroft - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Wicken windmill - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, reasonable hours!
• Lowfield Heath windmill - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, 14:00 - 17:00
• Billingford windmill - open Saturday 9th, 13:00 - 16:00
• Berkswell Windmill - open Saturday 9th, 12:00 - 16:00
• Fulwell windmill - open Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Old Buckenham windmill - open Sunday 10th, 13:00 - 16:00
• Hough windmill, Swannington - open Sunday 10th, 14:00

• Ifield watermill - open Sunday 10th, 12:00 - 17:00
• Belper North Mill - open Sunday 10th, 11:00 - 15:00
• Tocketts mill, Cleveland - open Sunday 10th, 11:00 - 16:00
• Fladbury and Cropthorne Mills, Worcestershire - open Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th, 10:00 - 16:00
• Ifield watermill - open Sunday 10th, 12:00 - 17:00

See also the list of mills open for Mills Weekend compiled by The Midland Wind and Water Mills Group.

As an example of pretty lax journalism, Secret London has recently put up a couple of posts about flea markets being held at the Wapping Hydraulic Pumping Station. It illustrated those posts with a old stock photo pulled from flickr, showing a wind engine at the pumping station, but the photo was taken 14 years ago, and on visiting the market this weekend I found there was no such wind engine present.

Via Google Earth I can establish that the wind engine was

• not visible in the clear aerial imagery from 2003, and doesn't appear to be in the less clear imagery through to 2008
• it looks like the concrete base on which the wind engine was erected first appeared in 2009
• the wind engine tower was present in 2010
• the only clear aerial image of the wind engine including the mechanism is from 2013
• 2014 image is unclear, but doesn't seem to show the wind engine
• The clear image from 2015 is definitely missing the wind engine

Having inspected the concrete base, which simply shows where the 4 legs were bolted down, there are no signs of any allowance for a pump to be present, so I have conclude that this was simply added as a decorative feature, whilst the pumping station was being operated as an art centre/restaurant called The Wapping Project, and was present on the site approximately 2010-2013. As far as I can tell, there was no historical basis for it being there.

The Ladybird Book of The Weather was published in 1962, and the cover dustwrapper shows a picture of a Suffolk style post mill with a steps mounted fantail. The illustration, one of many delightful ones in the book painted by Robert Ayton appears inside on the pages about cumulus clouds, which are shown in the sky above the mill. Under the wrap, the actual boards cover of the early editions of this book shows a different image - that of a weathervane. Later editions got rid of the separate dustwrapper, just having the illustration directly on the board front cover. As such, they lose just a little of the right edge of the painting, which had flowed over the fold of the wrapper.

I've seen 3 different version of the cover - the dustwrapper one, a variant with a ladybird appearing in the top right corner, and then one where the book is subtly restyled as "A Ladybird Book, The Weather".

What makes this news worthy is that I've just spotted that in 2023 "Climate Change, A Ladybird Book" was published, with a cover illustrated with wind turbines. This book has a foreword by the then Prince Charles, now King Charles.