Mill News from Windmill World

New windmill based on Chesterton

9 Sep 2010 12:00 UT

The Geograph website has this year already helped rediscover an otherwise forgotten remaining windmill at Forthampton. Now, via a photo titled New windmill below Green Acres it has brought a newly built (mock) windmill to my attention. This building, in the extensive grounds of a house called Green Acres in Lapworth, Warwickshire, appears to be based on the nearby full sized mill at Chesterton.

Using the historical imagery feature in Google Earth, it looks as if this building was constructed in around 2007 - where a hexagonal (presumably) metal framework can be seen. The building looks to be about 6 metres in diameter, which is quite substantial given that the original mill at Chesterton is itself just under 8 metres diameter.

Geograph for the Channel Islands

14 Aug 2010 12:00 UT

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.

iPhone windmills app - Living Mills of Holland

20 Jul 2010 12:00 UT

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.

New Website for Argos Hill windmill

3 Apr 2010 12:00 UT

The Friends of Argos Hill windmill, have just launched a new website about the mill. They also report the news that "A new body, the Argos Hill Windmill trust, is currently being set up and will soon be taking responsibility for the mill by leasing it from Wealden District Council."

Windmill photos by Alan Derwent Caston

18 Mar 2010 12:00 UT

I 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.

National Trust Library

18 Mar 2010 12:00 UT

The National Trust has announced that Over 150,000 historic books catalogued online for the first time. This catalogue covers books in the various libraries at 160 National Trust properties, and has been an ongoing project since 1958. There are still another 70,000 books to be added to the catalogue.

Amongst the volumes catalogued are a couple of very interesting books in the library at Penrhyn Castle.

"Groot volkomen moolenboek", Leendert van Natrus, Amsterdam, 1734-6
"Architectura mechanica, of moole-boek", Pieter Linperch, Amsterdam, 1727

Both of these are illustrated architectural guides about mills, written in Dutch.

Slow progress on Murphy windmill reconstruction

10 Mar 2010 12:00 UT

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 mill

10 Mar 2010 12:00 UT

There'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 Production

24 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

It'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

Bread flour (sub divided in to white, brown, wholemeal)
Biscuit-Making flour
Cake Flour
Household Flour
Food Ingredients
Other (inc. for starch)

There is also a category for self-raising flour, which is a significant distinction when the flour is sold, but less so at the production time, and the figures for this are all missing. It's interesting that there is no breakdown of the figures into any other grouping that consumers might consider important - such as stoneground, or organic.

The "lost" windmill of Forthampton

23 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

The 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

22 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

Google have sent their StreetView bikes out, visiting a number of National Trust properties. From a milling perspective, the sites of interest include

There's also a mill on the Corfe Castle site, but it's not included in the images, which only cover a small part of the castle itself.

It's interesting to see that the National Trust allowed (even invited) a commercial organization such as Google to do this, whereas it maintains a distintly unfriendly photographic policy in general even to its own members, prohibiting commercial use of their images.

"Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life" - William Stukeley 1752

19 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

William Stukeley's memoir about Sir Isaac Newton was completed in 1752. The handwritten manuscript has recently been made available via Turning the Pages at the Royal Society's website.

Newton had experience of windmills, and the memoirs talk of the model windmill that Newton constructed:

they 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

18 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

Canada Post issued a new set of definitives on 11th Jan 2010, which feature the Canadian flag flying over a number of historic Canadian watermills. The mills featured are:

Watson's Mill in Manotick, Ontario
Keremeos Grist Mill in Keremeos, British Columbia
Old Stone Mill National Historic Site in Delta, Ontario
Riodon Grist Mill in Caraquet, New Brunswick
Cornell Mill in Stanbridge East, Quebec

Geograph photo archive now accepting larger images

14 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

The Geograph website is a very useful archive of geolocated images througout the British Isles. You will find it linked to extensively through this site, and featured in thumbnails which are all made available via a Creative Commons licence. However one thing that has worried me about the site is the lost opportunity it represented - the images have long been restricted to just 640 pixels along their longest side. A photograph shows something at one moment in time - and part of the value of a large collection is being able to see how things looked at a particular time, and to compare that with views at a different time. With only small images being stored, much of the detail that these enthusiastic photographers had captured was being lost.

Of course there are competing issues here - one consideration is storage space, but that is so much cheaper now than when the project started. Another is the willingness of photographers to make their photos available to the project - many have been willing to do so for small images with the expectation that if someone wants a larger version it ought to be possible to contact the photographer to come to some arrangement. That's fine in theory, but over time the historical value of the archive is thereby dimished since it becomes hard if not impossible to contact the originator, and so we tantalisingly know that a higher quality image did exist, but cannot be located.

I'm pleased to note that Geograph have just begun accepting larger images into the archive for those photographers who are willing to provide them. Not everyone will, and I can understand the desire to keep back some of their best images, but I'm sure that we will see increasing numbers of larger "everyday" shots, which to my mind are the key value of this archive. If it's a famous landmark, then there will be loads of possible sources to get a quality image of it - it it's otherwise unremarkable then this archive is the place to find it, and many more people are happy to share their shots of (maybe special to them), but otherwise unremarkable places.

And to bring this back on topic, there is a great set of photos of Wimbledon windmill in the snow which have just been uploaded, which take advantage of this ability to upload larger images. You can't quite read the full text of the Baden Powell plaque above the door - but you can read the "Windmill Museum" sign below it! photo 1, photo 2, photo 3, photo 4

A technical article on identifying images

10 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

The previous item asked for help identifying the subjects shown in pictures - in this particular case some cinderella stamps. In general that's a hard problem, so I thought it's worth writing about various approaches to the problem itself.

The approaches

Croudsourcing

Simply asking is an example of croudsourcing - applying many eyes and brains to the task in the hope that someone out there can provide the answer. Humans experts are ideal for this task!

TinEye reverse search engine

There are however a number of computer helpers we can apply to the task, and the TinEye reverse image search is the first of these. In their words, "You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions." This is great because we can use it directly on our own image files. Of course, the match is dependent on the image being in their database, which they currently claim is 1,256,651,249 images.

Google Goggles

As mobile phones become more and more powerful, the combination of computer power, a camera, and internet connectivity has lead to some very interesting possibilities. Google Goggles is a mobile phone application that allows you to "use pictures to search the web." You need an Android powered phone to use this at the moment, and the general idea is that you take a picture of something using the phone camera, and a that is used to do a Google search. The end result is doing the search, but of course along the way the system has to try to identify what you were taking a picture of.

We are slightly fortunate in this particular case because the subject matter is constrained - all the stamps are although very poor reproductions, obviously taken from paintings, and "artwork" is one of the categories of images that Google Googles particularly specializes in.

The major downside to this is that we can't use this to directly recognise our images - we have to (first locate an Android phone and then) display the image on a computer screen and use the phone camera to rephotograph it.

PlinkArt

PlinkArt is another Android mobile phone application, that also allows you to take a picture of some artwork with your phone camera, and to identify it and find out about it.

Creative guesswork

There is actually a further constraint to our particular problem - the producers of these cinderella stamps probably simply found their images off the internet. So we can do the same - plug "windmill painting" into an appropriate image search engine, and look for the images amongst the results.

How did each approach do?

Croudsourcing - well I've yet to get any replies in from anyone on this
TinEye - managed to match one of the images to a poster being sold at Amazon
Google Goggles - managed to match one of the images to a book cover being sold at Amazon
PlinkArt - didn't match anything - I guess its database of artworks is rather smaller, and it doesn't benefit from also searching the huge selection of Amazon images.
Creative guesswork - well as it turned out, this was by far the most successful - 6 of the 7 images were matched this way

Benin windmill stamps (cinderellas)

9 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

Fred Atkins, the editor of Windmill Whispers, the quarterly bulletin of the Windmill Study Unit, which is primarily (but not exclusively!) interested in mills and milling as shown on stamps and other philatelic items, has sent me some pictures, and the following request:

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.

Updated welcome page at the Mills Archive

6 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

The dawn of a new year encourages people to "spring clean" their websites, (you may have noticed that effect as you look around this site!) and the Mills Archive is no exception.

The items on the Mill Archive welcome page now include:

Featured mill: Nixey's Mill, Brill, Buckinghamshire which was subject to an extensive renovation in 2009.
Featured person: Frank Gregory whose milling collection of 40,000 items is currently being digitized by the Archive.
Recent additions of
- Waterwheel at Killhope Lead Mining Centre
- Saving the last vestige of an Essex Windmill
- French tide mill at Veules-les-Roses

These replace the previous featured contents, which covered Willesborough Mill, Ashford, Kent; Stanley Freese; and the floodwater at Mapledurham, July 2007.

Vintage advertisments featuring mills

4 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

Vintage Ad Browser is a new service that allows you to browse vintage printed advertisments.

I'm not sure how dynamic the results are - many of the images seem to relate to Ebay auctions, and these auctions will end, so I don't know if that then means the ad will no longer show up.

A 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):

Ads for mills

Ads showing Dutch mills

Others

flickr windmill photos taken on an iphone

4 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

By one measure, the most popular camera currently used by flickr members is the Apple iPhone 3G. (That measure is the day by day percentage of users who upload images taken on that camera type. There are certainly many camera types which have a higher absolute number of photos that have been uploaded, but often over a longer period, and possibly from fewer users than the iphone).

However, the iphone 3G has a pretty poor camera (the camera on the iPhone 3Gs is improved, but still a long way off even a fairly cheap dedicated point and shoot camera) so I was interested to see what sort of windmill images iphone users have come up with.

The following are just a selection of images I found. As ever, searching for "windmill" throws up pictures that show traditional windmills, mock mills, wind engines, wind turbines, toys, and things that are barely relevant, or simply mis-tagged entirely. I've included any type of iphone here, not just the 3G model, and my selection leans heavily towards the traditional mills. http://www.flickr.com/photos/71644319@N00/4214104758 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22666725@N00/4145829939 http://www.flickr.com/photos/9457545@N03/4041244656 http://www.flickr.com/photos/68586899@N00/4014683919 http://www.flickr.com/photos/68586899@N00/4015448184 http://www.flickr.com/photos/35034348525@N01/3891088878 http://www.flickr.com/photos/89457104@N00/3875261387 http://www.flickr.com/photos/59473516@N00/3804523451 http://www.flickr.com/photos/59473516@N00/3214428476 http://www.flickr.com/photos/23316501@N00/3670304609 http://www.flickr.com/photos/19016560@N00/3330679639 http://www.flickr.com/photos/35524810@N02/3294714484 http://www.flickr.com/photos/19291889@N00/3261488886 http://www.flickr.com/photos/56191996@N00/2798110573 http://www.flickr.com/photos/55692211@N00/2490908894 http://www.flickr.com/photos/71704061@N00/2394538929 http://www.flickr.com/photos/71704061@N00/2395048338 http://www.flickr.com/photos/81764307@N00/2306134946 http://www.flickr.com/photos/99295536@N00/1387389147 http://www.flickr.com/photos/30216599@N08/3574394017 http://www.flickr.com/photos/9172009@N03/4234179460 http://www.flickr.com/photos/9172009@N03/4233410849 http://www.flickr.com/photos/9172009@N03/4234180984 http://www.flickr.com/photos/9172009@N03/4233405165 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567175313 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567177009 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567169961 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567178489 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567177737 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567171233 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567179287 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567176117 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567986032 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27124496@N08/3567986820 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22961573@N08/3789683154 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22961573@N08/3349681024 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22961573@N08/3349682278 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22961573@N08/3348852627 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22961573@N08/3349681870 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22961573@N08/3348853669 http://www.flickr.com/photos/41365407@N07/4223076058 http://www.flickr.com/photos/76887519@N00/3932203096 http://www.flickr.com/photos/37866891@N07/3976572977 http://www.flickr.com/photos/35040830@N08/3501168126 http://www.flickr.com/photos/35040830@N08/3501168272 http://www.flickr.com/photos/35040830@N08/3370218131 http://www.flickr.com/photos/34557249@N05/3606947375 http://www.flickr.com/photos/34557249@N05/3576748676 None of these are really good images technically, and there seems to be a high proportion of images that are deliberatly manipulated to produce a worse image than the camera is capable of for stylistic purposes. However, the iphone camera does have some advantages

carrying any camera is better than not having a camera at all for capturing images!
the iphone can geo-tag the images it produces - not everyone turns this on, but its great to have this info available to back up any manually given description of the photo location
the iphone 3GS additionally stores a compass direction that the camera was pointing in

SPAB Mills events for 2010

3 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

The SPAB Mills Section events page has been updated with the list of events for 2010. These are:

Saturday 13th March 2010. Members Meeting at NFU Stratford upon Avon, entitled "Mills Great and Small"
Saturday/Sunday 8th and 9th May 2010 - National Mills Weekend.
3rd - 7th June 2010. 4-day tour of mills in the Netherlands.
17th - 18th September 2010. 2-day tour of wind and watermills in Kent.
Saturday 13th November 2010. Members Meeting at the Artworkers Guild, Queen Square, London. Meeting includes The Frank Gregory Project Report.

Full details of many of these will be circulated with the January edition of Mill News.

Planning application for Bradleys Mill, Speldhurst, Kent

2 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

Rob Cumming writes as follows: (I'm asuming the date is wrong - planning committees don't normally meet at the weekends!)

"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."

Note 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.

Pictures of Holgate cap, now in place

2 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

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 windmill

2 Jan 2010 12:00 UT

Just 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:

find your windmill
look at it
think about it
draw a border
draw the windmill
paint the windmill
sign the painting

There, with instructions like that, anyone can be a great artist!

Unidentified windmill fire

30 Dec 2009 12:00 UT

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?