Tower windmills in medieval England :A case of arrested development?

Technology and Culture

Volumn 46, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 697-718

  Langdon, John ^a   Watts, Martin ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

^b NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 31344439287     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tech.2006.0023     Document Type: Review

References (113)

1. For an intriguing if speculative account of how the use of wind power developed during the Middle Ages, see Michael J. T. Lewis, "The Greeks and the Early Windmill," History of Technology 15 (1993): 141-89. Lewis argues that the idea of using wind power for mechanisms goes back to Hero of Alexandria in the first century C.E., and that the eastern Mediterranean was a critical conduit for the spread of windmilling technology throughout Europe.
2. Anne-Marie Bautier, "Les plus anciennes mentions de moulins hydrauliques industriels et de moulins à vent," Bulletins Philologique et Historique 2 (1960): 567-626;
3. Robert Philippe, "Les premiers moulins à vent," Annales de Normandie 32 (1982): 99-120;
4. Paul Bauters, "The Oldest References to Windmills in Europe," Transactions of the Fifth Symposium of the International Molinological Society, France, 1982 (Saint-Maurice, France, 1984): 111-24;
5. Edward J. Kealey, Harvesting the Air: Windmill Pioneers in Twelfth Century England (Berkeley, Calif., 1987);
6. Richard Holt, The Mills of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988), 171-75;
7. Yves Coutant, Windmill Technology in Flanders in the 14th and 15th Centuries, Part 1: The External Structures of Early Post and Tower Mills, trans. Michael Harverson and Owen Ward (Watford, Hertfordshire, 2001), 12.
8. The timing of the first appearance of windmills around the lower North Sea region has been debated, but so far, some time during the 1180s is the earliest that windmill constructions in the area can be positively dated. For a judicious assessment of the British evidence in particular in this regard, see Holt, 171-75.
9. John Langdon, "The Birth and Demise of a Medieval Windmill," History of Technology 14 (1992): 55, 72 n. 6.
10. The inquisitions were performed upon the death of a lay tenant-in-chief of the Crown. Some of the gaps in the distribution for eastern and southwestern England, as in the area just south of the Wash or in the Somerset Levels, are due to heavy concentrations of ecclesiastical estates that were not subject to the inquisitions. For windmills in these areas, see Holt, 22-24;
11. C. J. Bond, Medieval Windmills in South-Western England, Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Wind and Watermill Section, Occasional Publication 3 (London, 1995), esp. 30-31.
12. A good (and typical) published example is recorded for Walton, Somerset, in 1342, where, among other things indicating the construction of a post-mill, collars were bought for "the top of the standard," that is, the main post (Ian Keil, "Building a Post Windmill in 1342," Transactions of the Newcomen Society 34 [1961-62]: 151-54, esp. 153). At least three other published accounts of the construction of post-mills in medieval Britain exist: a post-mill built at Burstwick, Yorkshire, during 1296-97, another at Milton (in Prittlewell), Essex, in 1299, and a third at Newborough, Anglesey, Wales, in 1303;
13. see John Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy: England, 1300-1540 (Oxford, 2004), 119-23, 326-27;
14. John F. Nichols, "Milton Hall: The Competes of 1299," Transactions of the Southend-on-Sea and District Antiquarian and History Society 2 (1932): 113-67, esp. 137; and
15. John Salmon, "Erection of a Windmill at Newborough (Anglesey) in 1303," Archaeologica Cambrensis 95 (1940): 250-52. The authors are aware of three unpublished construction accounts for new post-mills in medieval England: those built in Cliffe, Kent, during 1316-17 (Canterbury Cathedral Archive DCc Cliffe 28);
16. East Knoyle, Wiltshire, 1325-26 (Hampshire Record Office 11M59 B1/79); and Halliford, Middlesex, 1381-82 (Westminster Abbey Muniments 27038).
17. For archaeological remains of British post-mills, see W. Percival Westell, "SandonMount, Hertfordshire: Its Site, Excavation and Problems," St. Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society (1934): 173-83;
18. M. Posnasky, "The Lamport Post Mill," Journal of the Northamptonshire Natural Society and Field Club 33 (1956): 66-79;
19. P. A. Rahtz and M. N. Rahtz, "T-40: Barrow and Windmill at Butcombe, North Somerset," Proceedings of the Spelaeological Society 8 (1957-58): 89-96;
20. J. R. Earnshaw, "The Site of a Medieval Post-Mill and Prehistoric Site at Bridlington," Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 45 (1973): 19-40;
21. D. N. Hall, "A Thirteenth-Century Windmill Site at Strixton, Northamptonshire," Bedfordshire Archaeological Society 8 (1973): 109-18;
22. W. T. Jones, "The Mucking Windmill," Journal of Thurrock Local History 23 (1979): 42-46; and
23. R. J. Zeepvat, "Post Mills and Archaeology," Current Archaeology 71 (1980): 375-77.
24. Medieval iconographic representations of post-mills occur in or on illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, brasses, or as graffiti; see, for example, John Salmon, "The Windmill in Medieval English Art? Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., 6 (1941): 88-102;
25. J. S. P. Buckland, "The Walsokne Brass, King's Lynn, 1349, and Its Windmill," Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 14 (1990): 342-52;
26. Adelaide Bennett, "The Windmill Psalter: The Historiated Letter E of Psalm One," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980): 52-67; and
27. Terence Paul Smith, "Windmill Graffiti at Saint Giles' Church, Bedfordshire," Archaeological Journal 15 (1981): 104-6. A large number of illustrations of medieval and early modern post-mills from around the lower North Sea region is provided by Coutant.
28. A good account of how post-mill foundations changed over the medieval period is provided by Terence Paul Smith, "The English Medieval Windmill," History Today 28 (1978): 256-63.
29. See also Lewis (n. 1 above), 173-75.
30. Terence Paul Smith, History Today Ibid., 167-68. Lewis suggests that unidirectional windmills were reasonably well known in the eastern Mediterranean from early times on. For speculation that they might have existed in medieval England,
31. see Smith (n. 7 above), 263.
32. As suggested by Holt, 144.
33. John Salmon, "A Note on Early Tower Mills," Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., 29 (1966): 75. The previous claim by one of us (Langdon [n.3above], 71-72 n. 5) that the Dover windmill might also have been unidirectional is clearly wrong, as discussed below.
34. Lewis, 177; Coutant, 77.
35. A. Rupert Hall, "Guide's Texaurus, 1335," in On Pre-Modern Technology and Science: Studies in Honor of Lynn White jr., ed. Bert S. Hall and Delno C. West (Malibu, Calif., 1976), 15, 28-29. We are grateful to Graham Hollister-Short for directing us to this reference.
36. Coutant (72-89) provides an excellent survey of the documentary and iconographic evidence for tower mills in Flanders and elsewhere on the Continent during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the earliest positively dated examples being from the 1380s.
37. See, for example, Coutant, 87-88; and Stephen Buckland, "The Origins of the Tower Mill: With a Note on Chesterton," Proceedings of the Eleventh Mill Research Conference, ed. Duncan Breckels (Manningtree, Essex, 1994), 3, 10-11.
38. See Coutant.
39. The National Archives, Public Record Office, Kew, London (henceforward TNA: PRO), E101/462/14.
40. For example, of the total construction cost of £36 6s. lid. for the mill (see below), £25 14s. 3/4d. (or 70.7 percent) had been spent during the period covered by the surviving portion of the detailed building account. Similarly, of the thirteen or so months it took to construct the mill (from late November 1294 to mid-December 1295), the first nine (to mid-August 1295) are covered in the surviving portion of the building account. The end date for construction of the mill was later given as the "Feast of St. Lucy, virgin, in the 24th year of the reign of Edward I" - that is, 13 December 1295 (TNA: PRO, E372/146, rot. 22, m. 2).
41. The only references in what survives of the account are to virgae, which mightrefer to windmill sails (a common translation of virgae), while beams of oak were recorded as being bought for the upper (or second-floor) joists for supporting the millstones (pro superioribus gistis... ad molas portandas) (TNA: PRO, E101/462/14, m. 2).
42. "Cuidam carpentario coadiuvanti Johannem de Hertinges & operanti circa rotam & ruellos eiusdem molendini per vj dies, ijs., capiendo qualibet die, iiijd. Et ij scicatoribus scicantibus quoddam lingnum ad curbas eiusdem molendini per ij dies, xiiij d., capientes [sic] per diem, vijd. Et cuidam fabro ville juvanti Ricardum fabrum ad fabricandum clavos scilicet kuvillos grossos ad ruellos predicti molendini de proprio ferro per iiij dies & dimidiam, ixd., capiendo per diem, ijd" (TNA: PRO, E101/462/14, m. 3).
43. See, for example, Langdon (n. 5 above), 122.
44. For illustrations of what the turntable and its roller track might have looked like, see Coutant, 80-81, 85.
45. Stephen Buckland, Proceedings of the Eleventh Mill Research Conference,Ibid., 72-76, 83; Langdon (n. 5 above), 113.
46. See especially Coutant, 79-82.
47. A useful glossary for the technical terms associated with windmill construction is given by John Reynolds in Windmills and Watermills (New York, 1970), 183-91. The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting this text.
48. Arnold Taylor, "Stephen de Pencestre's Account as Constable of Dover Castle for the Years Michaelmas 1272-Michaelmas 1274," in Studies in Castles and Castle-Building, ed. Arnold Taylor (London, 1985), 252.
49. The position of the windmill is shown on a plan of the castle in R. Allen Brown, Dover Castle, Kent (London, 1974), 8-9.
50. TNA: PRO, E372/146, rot. 22, m. 2.
51. Each of the other masons working on the site received 4d per day.
52. TNA: PRO, E372/146, rot. 22, m. 2.
53. Buckland (n. 15 above), 6.
54. Langdon (n. 3 above), 58-61.
55. A small abbreviation mark in the first line of the building account was misinterpreted so that the "five" cartloads of stone originally reported as being bought or dug up for the windmill (ibid., 69) should in fact have been 500 cartloads of stone. This amount clearly suggests something greater than a simple retaining wall, and a tower or substantial supporting wall now seems much more likely. The revised opinion of the Turweston windmill is discussed in more detail in Martin Watts and John Langdon, "An Early English Tower Mill? The Turweston Mill Revisited," History of Technology 25 (2004): 1-6.
56. Langdon (n. 3 above), 69-71.
57. Martin Watts and John Langdon, History of Technology, Ibid., 61.
58. Watts and Langdon (n. 31 above), esp. 2 and 6 n. 20.
59. Such at least is the sense given by the various definitions for carole in Frederic Godefroy, ed., Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française (Paris, 1937-38), 1:786. The Dictionnaire also cites an early sixteenth-century reference to the carole of a "powder" (gunpowder?) mill.
60. Coutant, 72-89.
61. Langdon (n. 3 above), 60, 71.
62. Frederic Godefroy, ed., Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française, Ibid., 74 n. 37.
63. Hypothetical reconstructions of which are given in Watts and Langdon, 3.
64. See Langdon (n. 3 above), 61-68.
65. The position of the seventeenth-century mill is known from enclosure maps as being near the road that ran from Brackley, Northamptonshire, by Turweston, to Buckingham; presumably the medieval mill was nearby (ibid., 56-57). We have visited Turweston, where only a few low humps exist in the current landscape to indicate the possible site of either the medieval or seventeenth-century mill.
66. Frederic Godefroy, ed., Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française, Ibid. (n. 3 above), 56.
67. For this argument, see Frederic Godefroy, ed., Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française, ibid., 56-58, 68-69.
68. Nicholas of Aynho does not appear in any of the records for Turweston, nor does Barbara Harvey mention him in either of her two classic works on Westminster Abbey (Westminster Abbey and Its Estates in the Middle Ages [Oxford, 1977]
69. and Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience [Oxford, 1993]),
70. although other master masons do figure as corrodians (pensioners) of the abbey (see Living and Dying in England, 1100-1540, 241, 249, 250).
71. ". . . uno molendino ventritico vocato le stonmilne quod nihil valet per annum eo quod est ruinosum & sic a diu stetit" (TNA: PRO, C135/195/3, m. 6).
72. The inquisition of Eleanor de Sudeley (John de Sudeley's mother) in 1361 records a windmill (molendinum ventriticum) at Burton Dassett worth five marks (£3 6s. 8d.) per year (TNA: PRO, C135/164/18, m. 2); for 1379 there is a reference to a windmill (again, molendinum ventriticum) at Burton Dassett, possibly worth 30 shillings per year (the manuscript is damaged at this point), in the inquisition of Margery, late wife of Robert Massy and sister of John de Sudeley (TNA: PRO, C136/10/16, m. 4).
73. Buckland (n. 15 above), 7-10;
74. Victoria County History, Warwickshire (London, 1949), 5:69.
75. Martin Watts, who revisited the site in July 2004, is convinced that the tower was originally a windmill, with signs of windows and opposing doorways (although these are now filled in); he estimates the height of the surviving tower to be about five meters (Martin Watts, The Archaeology of Mills and Milling [Stroud, Glos., 2002], 111).
76. TNA: PRO, DL29 508/8236.
77. TNA: PRO, DL29 508/8237-8.
78. As recorded in the 1445-46 account (TNA: PRO, DL29 508/8236).
79. The "stone windmill of Tanshelf" was still being referred to in the 1483-84 account, when the recording of the mill was transferred from the Tanshelf account to that for Pontefract (TNA: PRO, DL 29 511/8265). By 1498-99 the windmill was subsumed in the lease of Pontefract town as a whole and called simply the "windmill" without the "stone" modifier (TNA: PRO, DL29 8278). Accounts such as those for 1511-12, 1526-27, and 1546-47 - all sampled by Langdon - show that it continued to be described as such well into the sixteenth century (TNA: PRO, DL29 515/8289, 8292, 8294).
80. Commercial Papers of Sir Christopher Lowther, 1611-1644, ed. D. R. Hainsworth (Gateshead, 1977), 192. Buckland suspects that this mill was destroyed during the Interregnum (n. 15 above, 10).
81. H. L. Douch, Cornish Windmills (Truro, Cornwall, c. 1964), 26-28;
82. Watts (n. 47 above), 111-13.
83. Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, vol. 10 (Oxford, 1972), 72-73;
84. Watts, 112-13.
85. If this study had been extended to Wales, other possible medieval tower mills might have been added. For example, a windmill held by the Abbey of Aberconwy on Anglesey at the time of the dissolution in 1536 was referred to as "Towre Melyn Wynt" (Gerallt D. Nash, "An Introduction to the Windmills of Wales," in Transactions of the Fifth Symposium of the International Molinological Society, Ghent, Belgium, 1985 [Brussels, 1986], 190).
86. Lewis (n. 1 above).
87. Gerallt D. Nash, Transactions of the Fifth Symposium of the International Molinological Society, Ibid., esp. 170-71, figs. 15 and 16.
88. Michael Prestwich, Edward I, new ed. (New Haven, Conn., 1997), esp. ch. 3.
89. Martin Watts, Water and Wind Power (Princes Risborough, Bucks., 2000), 22; Prestwich, 208-9.
90. Horse-mills were a particular topic in this exchange. For example, the Abbot of Glastonbury wrote to Elizabeth de Burgh sometime between 1251 and 1266 to ask per mission to send a carpenter to examine her horse-mill, which had much impressed some of his monks (Helen Suggett, "The Use of French in England in the Later Middle Ages," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th sen, 28 [1946]: 68).
91. In a more ambivalent case, a horse-mill "of new structure and so far unheard of" was invented in 1295 by John the Carpenter, a lay brother of Dunstable Abbey, Bedfordshire. It was meant to be powered by a single horse, but when the design was tested, it was found that four strong horses could scarcely move it and, as a result, the monks of the abbey continued to use the old horse-mill. Annales Monastici, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 5 vols. (London, 1864-1869), 3:402. We are grateful to Paul Harvey for pointing out these two references.
92. As Stephen Buckland has stated (n. 15 above, 3): "In England the tower mill is very uncommon before the latter 18th century, and we must look elsewhere for its origins and widespread early use," a view supported by Richard L. Hills in Power from Wind: A History of Windmill Technology (Cambridge, 1994),
93. See also Rex Wailes, Windmills in England: A Study of Their Origin, Development and Future (1948; reprint, London, 1975), which shows many post-mills operating during the first half of the twentieth century.
94. Even near London, where the more "progressive" tower mill might have been expected to have made an early appearance, post-mills continued to dominate throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (J. S. P. Buckland, "Technical Notes on 16th and 17th Century London Windmills," Transactions of the Newcomen Society 60 [1988-89]: 127-36).
95. Hills notes that the Dutch experience has shown that tower mills, for instance, could be safely built to taller heights in order to catch winds more effectively (Power from Wind, 5, 61).
96. A tide mill was built at Lydden (in Thanet), Kent, during 1305-6 for the huge expenditure of £143 13s.; similarly, a tide mill erected at Southwark, Surrey, during 1340-41 cost £100 8s. 10d. (Mavis Mate, "Property Investment by Canterbury Cathedral 1250-1400," Journal of British Studies 23 [1984]: 8-9; Hampshire Record Office, 11M59 B1/93, ms. 31-31v).
97. Buckland (n. 15 above), 7.
98. For a particularly clear statement of this view, see Holt, 121. The issue is also discussed in Langdon (n. 5 above), 72-74.
99. Langdon (n. 3 above), 58.
100. For a survey of St. George's career, see R. Allen Brown, H. M. Colvin, and A. J. Taylor, The History of the King's Works (London, 1963), 1:203-5.
101. R. Allen Brown, H. M. Colvin, and A. J. Taylor, The History of the King's Works, Ibid., 204.
102. Norfolk Record Office, Knyvett MSS no. 49; we are grateful to Paul Rutledge for pointing out this document. For other examples of carpenters as builders of mills, see Langdon (n. 5 above), 252-56.
103. John Muendel, "The Distribution of Mills in the Florentine Countryside during the Later Middle Ages," in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed. J. A. Raftis (Toronto, 1981), 83-115, esp. 87;
104. John Muendel, "The 'French' Mill in Medieval Tuscany "Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984): 215-47.
105. John Langdon, "Was England a Technological Backwater in the Middle Ages?" in Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe, ed. Grenville Astill and John Langdon (Leiden, 1997), 275-91.
106. As quoted in Lewis (n. 1 above), 180.
107. For example, see Brown, Colvin, and Taylor (n. 67 above); R. Morris, Cathedrals and Abbeys in England and Wales: The Building Church, 600-1540 (London, 1979); and
108. L. F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (1952; reprinted with additions and corrections, Oxford, 1967), esp. chs. 1-11.
109. Philip Rahtz, "Building and Rural Settlement," in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. David Wilson (Cambridge, 1981), 49-98.
110. Langdon (n. 5 above), 116-18. This paralleled the domestic building techniques in later medieval England in which wooden sill beams on houses were increasingly placed upon dwarf stone walls;
111. see Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Late Middle Ages: Social Change in England c.1200-1520, rev. ed. (Cambridge, 1998), 160-61.
112. Michel Callon, "Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis," in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 98.
113. Michel Callon, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Ibid.