East Wittering, Sussex

 

Surprise

Passing through the Witterings, I was prepared to expect West Wittering to be the interesting one and East Wittering to be the preserve merely of modern houses and shops, hardly worth a glance. But I should know by now that nearly everywhere I go, there’s something to make me pause. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when, among the residential streets and get-rich-quick property developments, this popped up: what’s left of East Wittering windmill.

It doesn’t look much on the face of it:  the sails and cap have gone, the rendering that once covered the brickwork has partly peeled away, the stump of the tower mill sits quietly on a piece of private land. But it’s a reminder that once there were mills everywhere, grinding corn to make bread – watermills where there was a river or stream to power them, windmills where the terrain is open enough for the sails to catch the wind and turn. East Wittering is near the sea and the wind, as I soon discovered, can blow strongly there.

It’s not known how old this structure is – probably 18th century. It is known to have been working for most of the 19th century,* until the sails were removed in 1896. Perhaps it soldiered on under another power source (many windmills had oil engines installed), but it seems to have spent much of the 20th century derelict.† Nowadays the flour for our bread is as likely to be imported as to come from local fields. In many countries today, and in Britain in particular, foods such as bread are part of international trade networks and prices will increase as the effects of the war in Ukraine are felt more widely. This old mill is a timely reminder of how much agriculture, industry and trade have changed.§

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* Online sources give 1810 as the date of the first written record of the mill.

† If anyone has further information about the mill’s later history, do please let me know via the ‘comments’ button below.

§ Although Britain imports very little wheat from Uklraine (the UK produces over 80 per cent of the wheat it uses), the war is affecting prices because globally the supply is reduced.

Thorpeness, Suffolk

Moving building

For as long as I can remember, I’ve admired the combination of ingenuity and functionalism represented by the typical English post mill. The main body of the mill is designed as a lightweight wooden structure so that it can turn to enable the sails to catch the wind. A small circular sail, the fantail, sticks out behind and powers the mechanism that turns the mill. The base – usually known as the roundhouse – is stationary and anchored to the ground like any other conventional masonry building. This collection of mechanisms and structures can look a little ungainly, with the large wooden upper structure apparently balancing in a precarious fashion on top of the roundhouse, like a tall uprooted shed. But it works, and some post mills have turned for hundreds of years.

This one was first built in 1803 at Aldringham and was moved two miles along the road to Thorpeness in 1923. Its new job was to pump water from a well into the tall water tower that supplied the village – the tower featured in my precious post. It pumped away at Thorpeness until 1940 , when it was replaced by an engine. Repainted and preserved, the post mill must look as spick and span now as it ever has done in its two-century life. It survives as a reminder of the lasting importance of wind power in this part of the country, a power source that looks to be becoming increasingly important as the need for renewable energy grows more and more pressing.

Saxtead Green, Suffolk

A short break

Heading out of Framlingham the other evening, it occurred to me that I'd left the café too soon after my coffee and long glass of cooling water. So when I spotted, on the A1120, a lay-by with what looked like a public lavatory, I pulled swiftly in. The lay-by was on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, but there was no other traffic and I slid across with ease.

My camera bag was on the floor of the car so, rather than put it in the boot, I slung it on my shoulder and made for the small brick building, gratefully. On emerging, I caught sight of a distant flash of white through some trees and undergrowth. A few yards of bushwhacking brought me to a fence and a view of this wonderful structure, Saxtead Green post mill, gleaming in the sunshine. The mill is said to date back to 1796, although there has been a mill here since the 13th century. It was used commercially until 1947, and is now kept by English Heritage, its white weatherboarded walls, solid roundhouse, and mostly iron machinery maintained in good order.

Having photographed the mill, I made my way back through the undergrowth to the lay-by, to be confronted by a curious bystander who'd also pulled up nearby. ‘Whatever will he think I've been doing,’ I thought, ‘lurking amongst the undergrowth near the gents?’ He eyed me for a tense moment….and said, ‘Beautiful mill, isn't it? And that's the best view of it there is.’ Some people know.

Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

Hill and mill

Having looked at Compton Pike, I decided to follow a footpath up the nearby hill towards another local landmark. I was heading towards the windmill that I’d seen on top of the rising ground behind Compton Wynyates, the country house that seemed to be hidden from onlookers – hidden, that is, apart form a tantalizing glimpse of Tudor brickwork through the gate and through the trees.

When I got to the top of the hill and recovered my breath, the mill was a surprise. It’s a stone tower mill, but, unlike the imposing stone- or brick-built tower mills one is used to seeing, it is not a very tall structure – clearly the hill gave it most of the height it needed to catch the wind in its working days. The mill is said to date from the 18th century and to have been restored twice in the 20th, but has no proper sails, only the stocks. But apparently there is machinery inside, and with sails installed maybe it would turn again. For now, though, this picturesque little mill seems destined to remain a hilltop landmark, admired by travellers along the lanes between south Warwickshire villages such as Tysoe and Brailes, most of whom probably buy their flour from Sainsbury's in Banbury or the Co-op in Shipston on Stour.

Brill, Buckinghamshire

Turn, turn, turn

On the lumpy common above the village of Brill stands this windmill, apparently built towards the end of the 17th century and one of the oldest survivors of its type. It’s a post mill, which means that the structure is supported on an upright post, which is designed to allow the whole of the main part of the mill to be turned so that the sails face the wind. The post is concealed in the brick structure, the roundhouse, which forms the lower part of the mill. Everything above that – the wooden shed-like structure (called the buck) and the nine-metre-long sails attached to it – originally turned with the aid of the pole that sticks out to the right of the picture.

The mill at Brill ran until 1923, by which time motorized mills could grind wheat and barley much more cheaply and quickly than windmills. According to the Brill village website, when Albert Nixey, the last miller, stopped work, he was only the sixth recorded miller since the mill was built in around 1685. That means each one must have put in an average of 40 years service. Recently the mill has been lovingly restored, so the roundhouse, wooden-clad buck, and sails are all looking good. The complex mechanism of hand-made wooden gears and shafts inside has been overhauled, too, so that another generation can appreciate how grain was once turned into flour by in the mill at Brill on the hill.

Harbury, Warwickshire

WESTERN WIND (2)
In around 1910 the hand winch with which the miller at Chesterton Windmill (see previous post) turned his sails into the wind failed and the miller moved a mile or so up the road to Harbury, where there was a fine tower mill in the middle of the village. Although the sails and the original boat-shaped cap have have long gone, the tower is still there, providing a rounded point of interest in the rectilinear environment of this English village.

Harbury windmill is a much more conventional design that Chesterton. It’s basically a round tapering tower of brick and stone, on top of which there was originally a revolving cap that held the sails – the standard tower mill, in fact. It was built in the early-19th century and its four sails turned the millstones until just before the First World War, when the miller introduced a steam engine – this power plant was later followed by oil and later electrical power. Milling stopped in 1952 and after other industrial uses the building became a home in the late 1980s.

Chesterton Windmill, Warwickshire

WESTERN WIND (1)
Windmills are much more common in the east of England, where they take advantage of the stiff easterly breezes that blow across Lincolnshire and East Anglia, than in the west. But travellers along the Fosse Way, the Roman road that connects Cirencester in Gloucestershire with Lincoln, are used to seeing one windmill on a hilltop at Chesterton in Warwickshire. It’s one of the most striking mills in England, making a strong silhouette that’s visible for miles around.

Most windmills were built without the help of an architect. They were put up by builders or millwrights who knew how to construct a piece of machinery that worked efficiently and weren’t much interested in architectural airs and graces. But Chesterton Windmill, which was built in 1632, is very unusual because it was obviously built to the designs of an architect who had imbibed the influence of the Classical style. It was one of those buildings that people used to attribute to the great Classical architect Inigo Jones, though there’s no evidence that Jones designed it. A more likely candidate is Jones’s pupil John Stone, who worked on the manor house nearby.

The other odd thing about the mill is that the man who probably commissioned it, local grandee Sir Edward Peyto, was an astrologer and astronomer, and there’s a tradition that the building was originally an observatory that he used to look at the stars – presumably the rotating top, turned by means of a hand winch, housed Peyto’s telescope. If so, it was probably converted to milling quite early in its history, with added sails covered in sailcloth that cost 9 old pence per yard. It's very windy on top of this Warwickshire hill – it certainly was on the day I visited recently anyway – and Chesterton Windmill harnessed this energy to grind corn until around 1910, and was restored in 1969. For more about the history of this building, go here.