Mill News from Windmill World

New stock installed at Jill

21 Sep 2007 12:00 UT

Next week should see the culmination of five months’work by volunteers at Jill Windmill, Clayton.

Two Sweeps were removed in April for routine inspection, refurbishment and painting. An inspection of the 33 ft long Stock (to which the Sweeps are attached) revealed that the parts were rotting, so they decided to replace it. Detailed drawings were drawn up and a new Stock was ordered from a Danish company. The construction was to be laminated Siberian Larch.

The new stock has been fitted and painting of the Sweeps is complete. Weather permitting the plan is to hang two Sweeps next week, probably Wednesday.

Full details of the project are on the Jill website.

Millers' Tales - Kent Mills at the Mills Archive

18 Sep 2007 12:00 UT

Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, the Mills Archive have been able to expand their catalogue with a major focus on the mills of Kent. There are in the order of 8000 new items added, from the Mills Archive's own collections and from Kent County Council.

The Kent items are showcased via a specific Kent section to the Archive, at Millers' Tales: The Changing Face of Kent Mills. The coverage includes windmills, watermills, and horse mills.

I have added direct links to the relevant material on each of my Kent windmills pages.

The BBC had a write up of the Millers' Tale Project.

More street level photos, showing Murphy windmill base

10 Sep 2007 12:00 UT

San Francisco is situated at the end of Silicon Valley, and as such it's a hot bed of new technology. Hardly surprising then that it's becoming one of the best photographed and documented cityscapes in the world. As well as featuring in Google's Street View images, it's also the chosen first city for MapJack, another street level view website.

The base of the Murphy windmill in Golden Gate Park can be seen in this series of shots: 1, 2 and others.

This rather confirms that progress on the restoration appears to have stalled.

Sails for Impington mill hauled into place

10 Sep 2007 12:00 UT

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).

Wheatley windmill open day

10 Sep 2007 12:00 UT

The restoration of Wheatley windmill has been a protracted process, and I had failed to notice that at long last the scaffolding had been removed, and the mill is looking fine, with a full set of sails.

The Wheatley windmill website details the work that has been done since 1977, and provides other pages on the mill's history etc.

The mill was open on 9th Spetember 2007, and there's a good selection of photos from the day up on Flickr (unfortunately they are not all uniquely labelled, so you have to step through the much larger Oxfordshire set to find them all).

Auction of Framsden windmill painting to benefit Broomhill Pool

29 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

The campaign to save Broomhill open air swimming pool is holding an online auction of a painting of Framsden Mill by Ken Farrow.

Bids are accepted via email to the Broomhill Pool site, and can be submitted before Heritage Open Day on Sunday 9 September.

Miss Wimbledon 2007 Campaign Photoshoot

29 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

A set of photos of a photoshoot around Wimbledon windmill is now showing at Flickr. The model shown is Natasha - I'm not sure whether she is the current Miss Wimbledon, or whether this is just publicity for the competition itself.

News from East Dereham

29 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

Geoff Hayton, Chairman to the Trustees of Dereham Windmill informs me:

"The Trustees of Dereham Windmill have just received planning permission for a Visitor Centre to hopefully be built adjacent to the Windmill. The Trustees have applied for a Heritage Lottery Grant for the Full Restoration of the Mill to bring it to a working mill capable of grinding corn once again. The Visitor centre will be complimentary to the mill and contain toilets, Tea Rooms, a small exhibition area; it will also have classroom facilities for schools. The Trustees hope to hear the result of their application for the grant in November 2007."

Organic pork pies made with windmill stoneground flour

22 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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."

Tilty Watermill, Essex

22 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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/."

Bicycle clean up in Leiden

22 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Gaulter's Cottage windmill, Preesall

17 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Star trails at Great Gransden

14 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Pateley Bridge Windmill Preservation Group

13 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Harnessing the power of water at Three Mills

13 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Curb replaced at Holgate Windmill

13 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

L S Lowry at Bexhill, and Oldland Sweeps

10 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Knitting Magazine photo shoot at Jill

6 Aug 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Watermills in the floods

24 Jul 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Medieval post mill - in Lego

20 Jul 2007 12:00 UT

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).

The Mills Archive Bookshop

9 Jul 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Spencer Tunick photographing windmills and tulips

14 Jun 2007 12:00 UT

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.

Murphy's Windmill - Golden Gate Park

14 Jun 2007 12:00 UT

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

Traditional waterwheel planned on the Mersey

14 Jun 2007 12:00 UT

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.