Sails for Impington mill hauled into place
Impington windmill is to be found on the outskirts of Cambridge, a city known, amongst many other things, for being a rowing city.
As such there's a good supply of fit labour, and so, when the new sails need to be hoisted up on the windmill, there's no need to
use a crane - the age old technique of hauling it up by hand, using block and tackle can be used. This took place on
9th September 2007, and was quite a local happening, attracting a crowd of about 50 who came to picnic and view the event. Only one
pair of sails was completed, since it took longer than expected.
There's an (unfortunately not very clear)
picture of the process on Flickr - which also manages to
describe the process (perhaps ironically) as "mill righting", rather than "millwrighting" (well, if you consider that a windmill
should have its sails to make it "right", then this is "righting" the mill).
Update:[11/9/07]
There's a
series of 8 photos at Geograph, showing the second sail being
lifted into place. The captions to the photos provide a bit more detail:
"Starting to lift the second sail using a Tirfor winch, and block and tackle for the safety rope.
Optimistic team members hoped to have all four sails on in one day, but although raising the second took only an hour,
raising the first had involved a steep learning curve, and jammed pulleys, and only two sails were finished by the
end of the day."
Mills: [
Impington]
Tags: [
sails]
[
geograph]
Item: #654,
Posted: 10/9/07.
