Derbyshire 16 - a windmill on top of a windy hill - Heage Windmill

---

Life is slowly returning to normal after four weeks on the road in Suzy. She is parked up - still dirty and in need of a wash. Inside things are still as they were when we came home. Cleaning is long overdue. Autumn is fast approaching. The mists have arrived in the early part of the mornings making it difficult to see a few yards in front of the car. The clocks change next week and with that move the mornings will become slightly lighter for a few weeks but the nights will draw in.

House decorating has taken over from travelling but finally today we managed a trip out to a local windmill. A windmill in Derbyshire surely not. In Holland of course you find windmills part of the fabric of the countryside. In Spain on the hilltop of Consuegra they stand proud and white on the hill top above the town. In Greece they can be found. But here in Britain we had them but most have fallen into disrepair and no longer exist. Well that is what we thought until we found Heage just down the road from our new home has one and it still runs grinding flour and selling it to the public. It was a lovely morning with the sun shining so this gave us the chance to drive the few miles and take in a guided tour.

This part of Derbyshire in the little village of Heage is very pretty. Typical Derbyshire countryside with stone walls stretching as far as the eye can see. The leaves on the trees pretty in the colours of Autumn. Crimson, Copper and Gold.

Arriving on the car park it was fairly empty and in the distance we could see the Derbyshire stone and white capped windmill. A tour was just taking place and we hung about taking photographs with Glenns new camera. REcently purchased it replaces the one destroyed during our adventure with the bomba Aqua on Lake Garda. It cost £3 each to visit - reduced by 50pence each as we are holders of the Derbyshire Gold Card a combined library, discount and travel ticket. The staff were very friendly and took our money and put us to sit in the undercroft where there was a display of the history of the windmill. Apparently the first recorded reference to a windmill in Heage is an advertisement in the Derby Mercury of 16th June 1791. The advertisement stated that a windmill was to be erected in Heage and a mason was required to build it. All his materials were to hand but what was not said was that he had to quarry it himself out of the landscape which is why the mill took so long to build. The mill was probably completed by 1797.

As is usual the mill was purchased by the brothers Shaw who traded as millers and it was they who fitted the four normal sails and added the pretty fantail at the back which turns the cap into the wind. Still there today the ropes hang and the chains are still attached to the complicated internal workings of the mill. Our guide told us about the building work and the time in 1894 when the mill was tail winded a fancy name for a wind which picks up and blows from behind the sails . This event blew off the cap topped with lead and the sails.

Rebuilding commenced and with the six sails the mill with now more power continued to grind corn. It was in regular use until 1919, In 1919 the fantail was severely damaged in a gale and, presumably in line with the economic situation of mills at that time, the windmill closed down. Manpower was not available after the first world war and this mill could not compete against the newer bigger industrialised mills which could produce huge quantities of flour much quicker. The mill was then abandoned and became derelict.

Sadly today we were not able to see the mill running as the wind was too strong. But imagination is a wonderful thing.

Our guide took us to the top of the mill and showed us the cap from the inside, explained how the gearing worked and showed us the start of the process on that floor where the grain was hauled up and poured into the millstones on the floor below.

The middle floor held two millstones. One made from Derbyshire Gritstone the material originally used for millstones and the second stone a French Burr which was a later and more efficient, durable and hard wearing stone. On the ground floor a machine which separated the floor into coarser brown and heavy flour and into finer lighter floor. And with this our tour was over.

On our way out we were told that the mill had been struck by lightning, damaging the sails, some of the wood inside which split and it destroyed the fantail. Some of the wood in the building was sawn from trees that were mature when Henry VIII was on the English throne.

In 1966, a Building Preservation order (the first ever in the county) was placed on the mill – with a Grade II listing – with the Council purchasing the mill for £350 in 1968. Thank goodness they did buy it to save it for posterity.

Our last visit was to the shop to buy some of their wonderful flour which will make a lovely nutty crumble for the top of my apples.

---