East Sussex : Harebeating Mill

This is really the story of a mill that isn’t. Like many former windmills these days, Harebeating Mill, in Hailsham, is no longer a functioning mill; in fact, it’s not even a mill but a private house, with only the round brick base still remaining. The wooden upper storeys, while echoing in their style the original lines of the mill, are a thoroughly modern addition.

And even that brick roundhouse is not in its original location. The publication Hailsham in old picture postcards (M. Alder, European Library, Netherlands, 1984) includes an old photo of the windmill with the following caption:

This post mill, known as Kenwards or Upper Mill, was in a field at the rear of the Methodist Church. In August 1869 it was bought by Robert Thomas Martin and four months later the miller, John Grove Kenward, became enmeshed in the machinery and was killed. Mr. Martin was extremely distressed by the accident and he more or less gave away the windmill on the understanding it was taken down and removed. So it passed into the ownership of George Weller who dismantled and re-erected it on top of a two-storey roundhouse at Harebeating Lane, renaming it Harebeating Mill. The four shuttered sweeps had a span of over seventy feet. The sweeps were removed in 1918 and in 1934 the smock tower collapsed. The brick roundhouse, however, still survives.

Copyright prevents me from including any old images here but, for the curious amongst you, there are several online on the Mills Archive website. There’s a particularly good image taken around 1918 here, and a photo here from the 1940s-50s, by which time the mill was in a very dilapidated state.  

As you might expect, when I recently walked down Harebeating Lane to see this former mill, I also wondered about the name ‘Harebeating’. The residents obviously believe it relates to the mammal and have taken it to heart: one of the farms is named after it, there were sculptures of hares sitting on cottage windowsills, and two of the houses sported images of hares on weathervanes on their rooftops.

Online research wasn’t producing any answers so I asked on Twitter if anyone knew the origin of ‘harebeating’. One local birder tagged a few other birders in the local area and they all wondered, as I had, if the term referred in some way to hare coursing, the now-illegal blood sport where dogs were used to hunt down hares.

Fortunately, one of the birders also referred me to Richard Goldsmith, of the Hailsham Historical & Natural History Society, and Richard has been extremely helpful. Even more fortunately, Richard doesn’t believe the name harebeating has anything to do with hare coursing or, indeed, anything to do with hares. He was able to tell me that ‘The map of 1812 drawn to record the “Wastelands of Michelham Park Gate” shows its name as “Herring Green”’, though he warns that may have been the map maker’s interpretation of what he was told in very broad Sussex!

Richard went on to provide me with this explanation of the name from Judith Glover’s book Sussex Place Names (Countryside Books, Newbury, 1997):

Sussex has some unusual looking names, and Harebeating is surely one of the more curious. Its history is a little odd too, because it actually began as the name of a place some ten miles away at Piddinghoe, recorded during the sixteenth century as Harpetinge – alias “Harpingdene at Piddinghoo”. The place is now lost, but it was originally the tribal territory of a Saxon group called the Herebeorhtingas – Herebeorht’s people. The Domesday book lists it in 1086 as Herbertinges, and in 1211 it’s Herebertingas. By the time it became extinct, the name had become Harpingden, and the original tribal Harebeating form already transferred to what had been part of its manor lands since the Norman Conquest.

As Richard said in his email, this ‘is probably the nearest we are going to get to the original meaning of the name Harebeating.’ My sincere thanks to Richard for his assistance in trying to discover the source of this fascinating name, and to the local tweeters who offered suggestions and pointed me in Richard’s direction.

East Sussex : Rottingdean Windmill

On Wednesday 15 August my friend Jill and I set off on a walk to Rottingdean Windmill – its silhouette can just be seen on the hill in the top left of my photo. We could actually have parked much closer but where’s the fun in that? Instead, we parked near Brighton Marina and walked along the undercliff path to the charming little town of Rottingdean.

After recharging our batteries with tea and cake, we enjoyed a stroll around the town (taking a turn in Rudyard Kipling’s walled garden, marvelling at the Burne-Jones stained glass windows in St Margaret’s Church). From the village green, we could see the windmill on the horizon – time to climb that hill!

We huffed and puffed up a very steep Rottingdean street, turned a corner and there across the meadow of the Beacon Hill Nature Reserve was the mill.

Built on Beacon Hill in 1802, this smock mill ground corn into flour until sometime in the 1880s but, as you can tell from the fact that its sweeps are now empty, it no longer functions. The sweeps are turned from time to time though, as part of the regular maintenance of the building. The old photo of the mill is taken from the signboard at the site - I like how the figure of the man in the doorway gives an idea of the mill's size.

Although this sign on the side of the mill says that William Nicholson’s drawing of this windmill became the colophon for the Heinemann publishing company, that may not necessarily be true. The Rottingdean Preservation Society now looks after this structure and on their website (which provides a detailed history of the mill), it states that the Heinemann logo actually shows a post mill, whereas this is a smock mill - the silhouette is different

A couple of closer shots of the mill structure. The mill is made of wood that has been covered with tar to protect it against the weather.

We continued our walk along the trails that run through the nature reserve. Looking back towards the mill, you can see how close to the sea it is, and how exposed the site is to wild winds and stormy weather. It’s a testament to the Preservation Society that ‘well over 100 years since it last ground corn for the village, this mill still remains a landmark for all to see and enjoy.’

Rogiet windmill

What a delight it was to discover this new windmill earlier this week. That’s new, as in the first time I’d seen it or even knew of its presence, not new as in newly constructed, as you can tell immediately from its appearance. I was walking from Severn Tunnel Junction train station in Rogiet, in the nearby county of Gwent, to Slade Wood for a day’s butterflying with my friend Sharon when this structure appeared on the hillside in front of me.

Unfortunately, I’ve found very little information about the former windmill – what I list here has come almost entirely from the British Listed Buildings (BLB) website. This now ruined structure was once a tower-type windmill, most probably used for grinding corn into flour. The BLB lists a reference to the mill having been found in a lease document dating from 1526, so the mill is assumed to have been built around 1500. The lease or deed, between the parties Gamage (the lord of the manor), Lovelye and Mylward, relating to a ‘windmill and appurtenances’, is held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, so I haven’t been able to examine its content.

The tower is shown as a round building on a survey document dated 1746, is labelled ‘old mill’ on an Ordnance Survey map of 1830, and is shown as a dot on ‘Windmill tump’ on the 1881-82 Monmouthshire county OS map. The BLB website describes the structure as follows:

Exterior:
Of small scale rubble. Walls c 1m thick taper slightly and are offset below present wall head. Three original openings, possibly 4.
Former narrow stairs to upper floor S.
Doorway SW with rubble jambs, possibly a window above it.
Opposite is a second opening probably a window with doorway above; heads of both broken.
Intact slit window upper floor S.

Interior:
3 tiers of beam slots. Slots also indicate stairs from ground to first floor and plaster line indicates former continuation to top floor.
Diameter suggests one pair of millstones.

Next time I visit this area, I’ll try to get better photos of the ruin and will update this post with them, and any additional information I manage to find.

~~~~~~~~~

22 July, and a return visit to Rogiet. You can get quite close to the windmill by walking up the lane adjacent to its field, so here are a few more photos. The structure is in a sorry state of repair unfortunately.

East Sussex : Rye windmill

I realised when compiling my previous blog, in celebration of National Mills Weekend, that I had never written about one of the windmills I’ve visited in East Sussex, the one located in the historic old town of Rye.

This grade-II-listed building is a reconstructed smock mill and it sits alongside the river Tillingham, a very short walk from the centre of Rye, but this is not the first mill to have been built on this site. According to the windmill owner’s website, which references the 1594 Symondons map of Rye, there has been a mill here since at least the sixteenth century. It goes on:

The first recorded owner of a Rye Mill was Thomas Chatterton who built a 'post mill' in 1758. After his death his widow, Mary, passed it on to a Frederick Barry who demolished the 'post mill' in 1820 to erect a 'Smock Mill', similar to the one we see today. Milling continued until 1912 when the premises became a bakery. Eventually to be owned by the Webbs, a well regarded family of Rye bakers who were to become custodians of the Windmill for over 60 years.

Unfortunately, on a Friday 13th in 1930, the ovens of the bakery overheated and destroyed the wooden structure on the mill, leaving just the two story brick base. The mill was reconstructed in 1932 and it continued as a bakery until 1976. The ovens were put to good use when the mill became a pottery. The original oven doors can be seen in the base of the Windmill.

Since 1984, the mill has operated as bed and breakfast accommodation – now wouldn’t that be a special place for a weekend away? (No, I’m not on commission and I haven’t stayed there ... yet.) You can find out more about the mill and see some wonderful old images, both photographs and paintings, on its website.

It’s National Mills Weekend!

This coming weekend, 11 and 12 May, is National Mills Weekend, an annual event organised by SPAB, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, to celebrate Britain’s wind- and water-milling heritage.

Hog Hill windmill in East Sussex - on the list for closer investigation

Wind and water mills, some not usually open to the public, creak open their doors and welcome visitors who want to explore their fascinating innards. This year the focus is ‘A nationwide celebration of Britain’s mills in pictorial form’. As the SPAB press release explains:   

With their quirky shape, elegant sails or distinctive waterwheels, it’s not surprising that windmills and watermills appear so frequently in paintings and photographs, posters and postcards. These instantly recognisable buildings feature in some of Britain’s favourite works of art too: in a recent poll, John Constable’s The Hay Wain, featuring Flatford Mill in Suffolk, was voted the nation’s second best-loved painting.

Why not go and visit a mill near you this weekend? The SPAB website provides links to events up and down the country. 

Not being particularly handy with a pencil or paintbrush, my salute to Britain’s mills is in the form of photographs. I’ve blogged about those I’ve seen in Cheshire (watermills) and Sussex (windmills) and here in Glamorgan (one very much neglected windmill ruin). Here’s the list so far (I already have plans to visit several more), with links to the individual blog posts - just click on the mill's name if you want to read or see more.

In Sussex, the Argos Hill windmill

Chailey windmill

Halnaker windmill

Stone Cross (left) and Windmill Hill (right) windmills

In Cheshire, two watermills: a mention and photos of Nether Alderley mill

and a brief mention and a couple of photos of the watermill on the Dunham Massey Estate

In Wales, the ruined and neglected and overgrown Hayes Farm windmill.

East Sussex : the Argos Hill windmill

I visited the Argos Hill windmill, near Mayfield in northern East Sussex, on Sunday 12 March, its first open day of 2019, when staying with my friend Jill, who's another windmill fan. This was the first windmill open day I'd been too and, though this particular mill no longer functions, it has been much restored so we were able to take a good look at its inner workings on three separate levels.

The Argos Hill windmill, one of only 50 post mills still extant in England, began its working life around 1835, with its two pairs of milestones being used to produce both fine flour for human consumption and a course meal for animal feed. A post mill, for those who are not familiar with windmill terminology, is one where the entire body of the mill rotates on its immensely strong central post to face into the prevailing wind.

During its working life, the Argos Hill windmill passed through the hands of three separate milling families – the Westons, Mr G. Wickens, and Mr Richardson of the Neve family – and continued production right through until 1927, when all work ceased. The fantail blew off in a gale in 1928, and the shutters were removed from the sails in 1932, after which the mill sat abandoned until its first restoration began in 1955. Since then, the mill has suffered damage by lightning and gales and the 1987 hurricane but, since the Friends of Argos Hill was set up in 1999, it has been extensively conserved, preserved and maintained.

For the open day, much of the ground-level space inside the mill building had been cleared to allow for a milling demonstration using small quern stones and the energy of eager youngsters wanting to show off their upper body strength. Wheat was poured into the top hole, the stone was rotated (which obviously took some effort) and the crushed wheat spilled out from the gap between the stones. For a finer result, the mixture was swept up with a paintbrush, poured back in the top and the process repeated. I still wouldn't have wanted to let the flour anywhere near my teeth though.

The ground level also had a few interesting historical images and instructive signboards on display, and tea, coffee and cake were being sold as a way to raise money for the ongoing restoration work. Amazingly we didn't indulge!

Behind the mill structure was an intriguing device that I had never seen at a windmill before – the fantail. The Friends of Argos Hill Mill's website explains   

The fantail assembly is of traditional Sussex design. The fantail is fastened to the tailpole, which is independent of the steps. The fantail drives the two wooden cart wheels on the track around the mill, to keep the sails facing into the wind.

Even if it had already been fully restored, the fantail could not function as it used to as there is no longer sufficient space around the building. How amazing it must once have been though.

Clambering up the steps by the fantail we reached the spout floor and I was immediately struck by the intricacy and ingenuity of the engineering, as well as the impressive craftsmanship that had obviously gone into making and restoring everything. The spout floor, as you might have guessed, houses the spouts down which the milled flour pours into bins for bagging.

The next floor up, reached by a near vertical ladder, was the stone floor where the grinding actually took place. I can scarcely imagine the noise that must have made many a mill worker deaf when the mill was in full swing. We didn't venture up to the very top level, the bin floor, on to which the sacks of wheat were hoisted and emptied to begin the milling process.

Keen volunteers were on hand at each level to explain the mechanics of the windmill with true enthusiasm, and the windmill – and their well-run open day – were a wonderful testament to their backbreaking conservation efforts and their commitment to preserving such important parts of England's early industrial heritage. The Friends run a series of open days each year – see here for the dates – and I’d highly recommend a visit if you’re in the area. 

East Sussex : the Chailey windmill

You can tell that a friend knows you well when they collect you from the station at the start of your visit and, as a lovely surprise, take you to visit a new-to-you windmill on the way to their home. My friend Jill knows me very well indeed!

Our surprise visit was to the Heritage Mill at Chailey in East Sussex, and what a charming windmill it is. Though in need of a good wash down to clean off its winter accumulation of green mould and lichen, it’s easy, I think, to see why this is labelled a ‘smock’ mill – its grubby white, weather-boarded, slightly A-line body shape bears a very strong resemblance to the blousey type of shirt worn by male farming workers in years gone by and that is exactly how this design of windmill acquired its name.

Windmills came in three types, the post mill, the smock mill and the tower mill. The diagram below, which was actually photographed at another windmill (more on that one in my next blog post), gives a brief explanation of the differences in design but, basically, in a smock mill it’s the top part only, the cap, that rotates -- with the aid of its fantail (the attachment at the top) so that its sails face into the wind -- rather than the entire body of the mill rotating around a central post (that would be a post mill).

Occasionally, luckily only very occasionally, a freakishly strong wind gust can catch that fantail and spin the top section around against the wind – in windmill-speak, the mill gets tailwinded – and that's exactly what happened to this mill, not once but twice in its working life.

In fact, this windmill has had a particularly interesting history: it was originally constructed in 1830 at Highbrook, near West Hoathly, then was dismantled and moved, in 1844, to serve as a navigation marker on the south coast at Newhaven, before being moved again, by bullock cart, to its final resting site in 1864.

Once re-erected at Chailey, the windmill operated as a flour mill for the local community, though the windmill's life was still not without incident. The first of the tailwindings I mentioned above, which resulted in the top cap and sails being completely blown off the mill, happened during a violent storm on 5 January 1928, and in 1935 another violent weather event caused the second tailwinding, effectively bringing the mill's working life to an end when the sails blew away and the windshaft snapped. The mill machinery was dismantled, its interior gutted, and the building served a variety of purposes, from tuck shop to emergency accommodation for World War II nurses, until being taken under the wing of the Friends of Chailey Windmill in 1986.

Though the building was not open when we visited, it now houses a Rural Life Museum, containing photographs and displays about past times in the Chailey area. You can find out more about the museum and its opening times on their website.

Halnaker Windmill

From Boxgrove Priory (see previous post), Jill and I headed north to find the building we’d really travelled across the county to see that day, Halnaker Windmill – we have a bit of a thing about windmills and this was one we’d been planning to visit for perhaps a year!

This was a Saturday so the roads were busy, in part due to a local event called ‘The Festival of Speed’ – not something we knew anything about, but we assumed that was why the first lay-by where we were hoping to park was full and so we carried on to the second. From there, we followed a public footpath alongside fields tall with golden cereal crops and, somewhat surprisingly, the symmetrical rows of grapevines. The footpath was ancient, part of the old Roman Road of Stane Street, which once carried legions, traders and assorted travellers from London to Chichester, just a few miles further south. Truth be known, this was probably an even more ancient path as many Roman Roads follow much older trackways where people have walked for thousands of years.

We could tell no Romans had walked this way for a while as the path was quite overgrown with brambles and bracken in parts, and we emerged at the other end with a few scratches for our trouble, but it was worth it. We had already gained some height in the landscape, and the views continued to improve as we pressed on up the wider, more well defined roadway to the windmill. (Something quite momentous and thrilling happened around this point but I’ll explain more in my next blog post.)

The top of Halnaker (pronounced Hanaker – the L is silent) Hill is a scheduled ancient monument as Neolthic people once constructed a causewayed enclosure here and, in more recent times, a World War Two observation post (for radio direction-finding) was also built here. But it was the windmill we wanted to see.

The first recorded windmill on this site was built in the 16th century, for the use of the Duke of Richmond’s local Goodwood Estate, though the present structure is not that old – it dates from the mid 1700s and continued to function until 1905, when it was struck by lightning.

The entry for the mill on the Historic England website explains its structure:

Red brick, covered with a thin coating of burnt Sussex tiles. Octagonal cap of beehive shape, made of sheets of metal, with finial. Sweeps intact. Fantail missing. The mill is only a shell with no internal floors or machinery.

The windmill was in a ruinous state when it was first restored in 1934, then needed restoration again in 1954 and once more in 2004. And it’s still being restored. An article in the Chichester Observer of 28 June 2018 notes that its tiles were replaced in October 2017, its white cap and balcony have just been repaired and repainted, and there is a photograph showing the recent refitting of the sails – so we were lucky to see it in such fine condition, though the building was still fenced off and lacked a proper door.

It’s wonderful to see this historic structure being so well cared for and conserved. Not only do visitors get a close-up look at this wonderful old building but, from its site so high on the South Downs, the panoramic views of the surrounding countryside are amazing. Both the windmill and those panoramas are well worth the climb up the hill to see.