Hello everyone! Now some of you may recognise the name ‘Oldland Windmill’ because they were the winners of the English Heritage Angel Awards in 2014 when it was voted for the Angel Award for the English Heritage Followers’ and Telegraph Reader’s favourite.
I found a bit about the history of the restorations for Oldland Windmill, one of our Corporate Friends. It is a wooden mill that was built around 1700 by the Turner family in Hassocks where it provided flour to the villages of Ditchling and Keymer. It stopped production in 1912 and was given to the Sussex Archaeological Society in 1927. In 1980 the mill was declared to be a ‘dangerous structure’ and was ordered to be demolished. The Hassocks Amenity Association took over the mill in 1980 and a group of volunteers attempted its restoration. Over the next 40 years donations were raised by conducting tours and giving public presentations on the history of the restoration.
In 2008 flour was produced for the first time since it closed and past Chairman Fred Maillardet stated ‘it would have been the first time for something like 100 years that we actually produced flour. That flour was immediately taken home by one of our colleagues who baked a cake and returned two hours later, so that we could eat the cake together with a little champagne.’ That cake will have represented over 40 years of hard work so I bet it was the best cake anyone had ever eaten over at Oldland!
I’m sure you are thinking that the SPAB must come into this somewhere? Well you are correct! In 2009 the SPAB awarded Oldland Windmill a commemorative plaque to acknowledge the quality of the restoration of the mill.
(This photo is from the Oldland website)
It’s not just Oldland Windmill that have successfully restored and protected this history, all over the country there are current projects and fund raising to increase awareness and interest in the importance of preserving the heritage of mills. And you never know, one of these could be the future winner of the next Heritage Awards!
All of this is very interesting but what I really wanted to draw your attention to today is the ‘Mill Song’ created for Oldland Windmill which is now on Youtube! Click here
The video was made by Gordon King, one of the senior volunteers at Oldland and the song is composed, sung and played by Stuart Leon, who sounds rather Bob Dylan or Donovan-esque in my opinion! The video shows the volunteers hard at work restoring and operating the mill as well as Stuart strumming on his guitar (the picture I’ve used here is a screenshot from the video). One of my favourite lines is ‘David Driver was the last in line, to push the old tail post, and turn the mill to the south west wind – the breeze he liked the most’.
It is great to see volunteers and supporters having fun with the mill and thinking of new ideas to make it better known to the public. The Mill Song is a great way to do this and the fact that it is actually really catchy makes me know that I won’t be able to come across Oldland without humming this song!
If this has got you interested in the windmill, you can also visit our featured web page about Oldland here.