Text 6. The windmill

Although they are not nearly so ancient as the Celtic crosses, the UK has some of the oldest and finest traditional buildings in the world – from manor houses and cottages, to farm barns and oast-houses, with their distinctive kilns for drying the hops used to make beer.

The windmill is perhaps one of the most fascinating. Many traditional windmills exist to this day, poised on hilltops to harness the power of the wind, or on the flat open land of East Anglia, in eastern England.

Windmills were first constructed in the UK from around the 11^th century and were mainly used for grinding corn. They were also used for draining and pumping water from marshes, and later, for driving machinery such as saw mills. By the 15^th century, there were over 10,000 windmills in the UK, particularly in East Anglia and the southern countries of Sussex and Kent. The skills of the miller were often passed down through generations of the same family, and ‘Miller’ is common surname in England today.

The two main types of windmill built in the UK were the post mill and the

tower mill, which was usually built of stone or brick. In a post mill the whole body of the mill revolves around a certain shaft to turn the sail into the wind, while in a tower mill only the top, or cap, moves, as in the windmill pictured here.

Although thousands of windmills have long since fallen into disuse, or disappeared altogether, fortunately many have been saved by conservationists and restored to working order. Some are in the hands of the National Trust, our foremost conservation organization.