Millers of Holgate (PDF)

£6.00

This is a PDF of a printed publication, which is available here

Mills Archive Research Publication number 1. A4 40 pages many 27 illustrations and maps

This study concentrates on the men and women who owned and operated this tower mill, built in the 18th century, which alone today survives of the many windmills of York. We learn about the changing technology, the business carried on by the Waud family who worked the mill for the first eighty years of its existence, and their successors, and the extent to which their practice flourished and eventually failed. Her research has enabled the author to show how many of the challenges Holgate mill faced were typical of the national milling scene: stone dressing and maintenance, customers and their demands, grain and bread prices, wages, industrial accidents and the prevalence of lethal lung diseases, even the weather. She spices her account with individual details of Holgate practice: a dog alarm, the miller’s costume, the sidelines that added to his income, unusual anecdotes of cheating millers.