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Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox Windmill High Salvington Windmill (formerly known as Durrington Windmill) is a Grade II listed post mill in High Salvington, Sussex that has been restored to good working order. The mill stands some 320 feet (98 metres) above sea level on the Channel side of the South Downs and is ideally situated to take advantage of incoming sea winds. In earlier days, it may well have been used by sailors to aid coastal navigation.

History

1. Early times

It is not known how long a mill has been standing here. It is possible, however, that there was one in the parish of Durrington Manor as far back as the 1300s, the only suitable site being where the current mill stands. The earliest definitive mention can be found in church records, which indicate that the miller was fined in 1615 for default on paying his contribution to the annual tithe to the vicar of Tarring. Budgen's 1724 map showed a mill on this site, most probably lost to a lightning strike and fire on 23^rd November 1755.

2. The current mill

The current mill can perhaps be said to have experienced four main periods in its history.

(i) Life as a functioning mill

The current mill is assumed to have been built between November 1755 and May 1757, when it was insured by the Sun Fire Insurance Company for the sum of £250 at a premium of £1.^[3] It most likely started life as an open-trestle mill with two pairs of common (cloth-covered) sails. Later improvements and modifications resulted in the replacement of one pair of common sails with a pair of spring-shuttered ones and the construction of a wooden roundhouse, most probably to protect the trestle. The original crown tree, now replaced, had the date 1774 carved into it, maybe to record the date of the mill buck extension. Dendrochronological analysis carried out in 2012 on ancient timber from the tail stone hursting, showed that one tree had been felled in 1780 and presumably used for repair.^[4] The windmill was reconditioned by Medhurst’s of Lewes in 1871. It continued to grind flour for the Worthing area until full-time milling ceased in September 1897 after which it was reputedly retired to a role of grinding animal feed until 1905.

(ii) Survival as a tourist attraction

In September 1906, the mill was put up for sale by auction and was purchased by a local entrepreneur, A. C. Jackson. He repurposed the mill as a tourist attraction, replacing the wooden roundhouse with an octagonal rendered brick and concrete structure for use as a tea-room. From then until 1959, the mill was a local attraction with loggias and railway carriages as holiday homes. Maintenance was neglected, however, and during a blizzard on Boxing Day 1927 a sail tip was broken off and then another completely lost to a spring gale in 1929; the remaining sails were subsequently shortened, presumably to prevent further damage, and fixed in position with a dummy stock placed at the bottom. The mill was grade II listed in 1949. Perhaps just in time, because four years later, West Sussex County Council decided to save only one of each of the three main types of windmill in the county, choosing High Salvington as representative of a post mill and reputedly one of the oldest mills in Sussex.

(iii) Repair and restoration

In 1959, the mill was bought by Worthing Borough Council. Messrs. E. Hole and Son, millwrights of Burgess Hill, undertook structural repairs in 1960 and fitted a new pair of stocks and four new non-turning short sails. Without this work, particularly to the cladding of the buck, it is possible the mill would not have survived the harsh winter of 1962-63. From this time until 1976, members of the public were able to borrow the key from an adjoining neighbour and enter the mill unsupervised; it was during this period that the 1757 Sun Insurance plaque was thought to have disappeared. In March 1976, one of the dummy sails was broken off in a gale and the other three removed. An inspection of the mill revealed it was not in good repair. Later that year, and by public meeting, Worthing Borough Council helped establish the Friends of High Salvington Mill and together they decided to form a registered charity in 1977, the High Salvington Mill Trust, to facilitate the restoration of the mill. With grants and loans of £15,000 from the Council and grants from the Science Museum totalling £10,000, restoration by a team of enthusiastic volunteers began. The first major task was to raise the body of the mill to allow the crown tree to be replaced and the trestle rebuilt. With the cladding also replaced, the mill structure was now secure and, at last, weatherproof. The first pair of 58-foot diameter sails were installed in summer 1987, managing to survive the hurricane of October that year despite being turned against the brake by the power of the wind.

(iv) Working again as part of local heritage

In 1990, with a grant from Worthing Borough Council, the brick roundhouse was demolished and rebuilt of timber to replicate better the original; the restored mill began grinding again in April 1991, the first time for almost 90 years, producing 56 lb of flour. A granary rescued from a farm near East Grinstead was re-erected at the mill in 1994. In 1998 it was discovered that one of the stocks was split. A new stock was made from laminated larch and the sails were refitted. In the same year, the Visitors’ Centre (now known as The New Barn and housing a shop, workshop and kitchen) was completed with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and in 2003 a new Gatehouse was built. The Glynde Windpump was acquired, restored and established in the grounds during the period 2007-09, to be joined by the Nutley Wind Engine and Generator in 2013. The engine and generator were separated, and a well-pump fitted to the wind engine in 2020.

The High Salvington Mill, now part of a residential area at the edge of the town and Downs, has very much become a community project. It is supported by some 100 volunteers and regular fund-raising events, resulting in one of the few working windmills left in the country.

3. Millers and owners

During its lifetime, the mill has had at least 10 owners and 22 millers, often with close family connections. Its value has fluctuated along with its fortunes and those of the industry: first insured for £250 in 1757 and subsequently purchased over the years for £1200 in 1877, £350 in 1906, £10 in 1908, £750 in 1917 and 1921, £2250 in 1926 and, finally, by Worthing Borough Council, again for £2250, in 1959.

Some of the longest-serving millers, either as tenants or owners, include: John and Edmund Drewitt, 1734 – circa 1776; William and John Sheppard, 1792 – 1819; Daniel Redman, peripatetically, 1824 – 1843; William Beard and family, 1853 – 1872; Walter and George Brown, local bakers, 1880 – 1891; and, lastly, Stephen Scutt, 1897 until the mill shut in 1899.

Restoration

The mill under restoration

The mill under restoration

Left: The steel frame supporting the mill buck (photo J. Pelling c.1981).

Right: A new sail being positioned (photo origin unknown).

Inspection of the mill after the loss of a sail in 1976 revealed that the trestle had been weakened by water penetration, insect attack and pigeon infestation. The machinery and millstones were removed from the mill and placed in storage. A steel frame was constructed and used to raise and support the mill buck whilst the trestle and crown tree were replaced. A new 10-foot (3.05 m) diameter brake wheel with 136 apple cogs was constructed over a period of three years and fitted, after substantial work on the windshaft, in 1985. One pair of sails was fitted in 1987 and the second pair the year following. The mill was reclad, floors replaced and machinery repaired or newly constructed. The roundhouse was rebuilt in 1990 and the restored mill ground for the first time on 4 April 1991.

The mill received a conservation award in 1993 for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, recognising the quality of the restoration.

In 2008, discovery of rope burns on the studding by the spout floor window revealed that this was probably originally a pop-hole through which the brake rope would have been dropped, thus allowing the miller to operate the brake from the side of the mill exterior, rather than from behind the mill, as had been the practice in recent years. To improve the authenticity of the restoration the window was replaced with a pop-hole and removable shutter.

In July 2009 the exterior of the buck was repainted. Window frames have also been repaired and repainted. A new set of steps were made and fitted in 2016.

The restoration was largely completed by a small band of committed volunteers, supported at various times by the Weald and Downland Museum, Worthing College of Art and Design, the 1^st Findon Valley Venture Scouts and the Worthing Fire Service. A full treatment of the restoration has been recorded by Peter Casebow (2021) in High Salvington: saving Worthing’s last windmill, published by The Mills Archive Trust, Reading. Copies of this book can be obtained from the Mill.

Description

High Salvington Windmill is a mid-18^th century head and tail post mill with a single storey roundhouse. The mill rotates on a solid oak post which is in turn braced by a trestle of heavy pine quarter bars supported by two cross trees, themselves resting on four brick piers. The trestle is protected by a wooden roundhouse, modelled on the pre-1907 structure. On top of the post, a Samson head is fitted and this supports the crown tree - a large, heavy oak timber to which the body of the mill is attached.

The windmill has a pair of common sails and a pair of spring-shuttered sails, carried by a wooden windshaft with a cast iron poll end. The mill has two pairs of millstones, arranged head and tail. The head stones are Derbyshire Peak stones while the tail stones are made from pieces of more durable French Burrstone, embedded in plaster of Paris. Each pair of stones is driven by its own wheel, called the head (or brake) wheel and tail wheel, respectively. The Friends of High Salvington Mill were able to rebuild the head wheel, but the tail wheel, an original of a rare "compass arm" design, is now too fragile to be used for grinding.

Tenter gear is installed to adjust the gap between the stones and, along with the usual system of levers adjustable via a tentering screw, the mill also has a rope attached that allows the miller to lift the half-ton (500 kg) runner stone, while governors adjust to the wind speed and increase or lessen the gap accordingly.

Glynde windpump

The High Salvington Mill Trust acquired the Glynde Windpump, a much smaller hollow post mill, in late 2007 and completed restoration over the next two years. This pump originally stood at grid reference TQ 457 087 - 50.859°N 0.069°E; it was built in the mid-nineteenth century, either to drain local lime kilns when flooded in the winter months or possibly to raise water from a cutting parallel to the kilns, for slaking the lime. The rotting remains of the pump were rescued by Frank Gregory and Andrew Norman, who started the restoration, before its acquisition by the Trust, which completed the work and installed it beside the existing windmill.

The trestle has been embedded in solid foundations, on which the restored post has been mounted. The buck (body) has been restored and resized according to photographs of the original taken in 1929, and the gear ratio between the windshaft and crankshaft has been adjusted, with a new gear wheel cut. An easily removable roof has been installed and new sails have been designed and constructed. The visually restored windpump was unveiled on Sunday 11 May 2008, during National Mills Weekend.

A Dando ‘O’ hand pump, originally used to drain trenches in World War I, was acquired in July 2009. Its installation and connection to the con rods took place in August and September 2009, allowing the Glynde Windpump to raise water again for the first time in over fifty years.

Nutley wind engine

In 2013, the High Salvington Mill Trust acquired from a farm at Nutley, and in many pieces, a 44 foot (13 metre) steel mast mounted with both a wind engine and above this, a wind generator. Interestingly, the wind generator was a later addition that would have prevented the successful operation of the wind engine.

The original mast was split into two to provide separate masts for the wind engine and generator. The wind engine is a Hercules oil-bath wind engine with an 8-foot diameter fan. Many parts were missing requiring the maintenance volunteers to research and make new parts. In 2020, a well pump was acquired and fitted to the wind engine.

The wind generator has a 6-foot diameter two-bladed wooden impeller driving a Lucas 24V DC lorry generator capable of very high speeds. The volunteers built a control box with a series of light bulbs so that the faster the impeller turns, the more lamps are lit, with the full 120 W output lighting all of the bulbs.

The Glynde Windpump (aka Beddingham Water Pump), Nutley Wind Engine and Nutley Wind Generator restored and operating on 28 June 2020 in High Salvington Windmill field (photo J.T. Best).

Public access

High Salvington Windmill is open to the public, from 2:30 pm to 5 pm, every first and third Sunday of the months April through to September, inclusive. Regular fund-raising events take place during this period including an annual fete, crafts fair and classic car day. All the maintenance and restoration work at the mill is carried out by volunteers. Organised parties can also arrange to visit the site for guided tours at other times, by arrangement with the visit organiser (see Mill website).

Glossary

Brake wheel (sometimes called the ‘head wheel’): mounted on the windshaft as the main driving cog wheel, around the rim of which the brake contracts to stop the mill sails from turning.

Buck: the body of a post mill sitting above the trestle; the buck revolves as the mill is turned to face the wind.

Cross trees: large horizontal beams, the ends of which rest on brick piers at the base of the trestle on a post mill, which carry the weight of the whole structure via the quarter bars

Crown tree: main beam across the body of the buck which pivots on top of the post carrying the whole buck with it.

Governor: automatic centrifugal device which adjusts the distance between the stones as the rotation speed of the sails changes with the wind.

Head wheel (sometimes called the ‘brake wheel’): carried on the windshaft to turn the topmost millstone and having a brake around its circumference.

Hursting: timber framework supporting millstones and enclosing the main gearing.

Millstones: the pair of stones which grind the grain, the bottom fixed stone being called the bedstone and the upper rotating stone, the runner stone.

Pintle: the pivot centring a post mill on top of the post.

Poll end: large cast iron socket on the end of the windshaft through which the sail stocks are held.

Post: the main upright post on which a post mill revolves.

Post mill: this has a wooden body (buck) containing all the machinery, which is balanced upon a post and trestle; the whole buck revolves round to face the wind.

Quarter bars: beams which reach diagonally from the outer ends of the cross trees up to the sides of the post below the crown tree, securing the upper end of the post, helping support the weight of the buck and bracing the whole trestle.

Roundhouse: the walled and roofed enclosure surrounding the trestle part of a post mill, made to protect the trestle and to provide storage space.

Runner stone: top stone of a pair which is turned by the mill (see Millstones).

Sails: sometimes called sweeps, sails are blown round by the wind and are the source of power in a windmill which is then harnessed to drive the machinery; cloth, or common, sails are formed from sailcloth spread over a lattice framework while spring sails have shutters, adjusted by a spring, which will open and close according to the strength of the wind.

Samson head: fixed to the crown tree, an iron collar and plate bearing that fits over the pintle of the post, around which the buck can rotate.

Stock: the long beam which attaches to the poll end of the windshaft and to which the sails are fixed.

Tail wheel: carried on the windshaft to drive a millstone from above.

Tenter gear: a manual mechanism to adjust the gap between millstones.

Trestle: the internal supporting structure of a post mill.

References

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Further Reading

Beedell, S. (1975) Windmills. David & Charles, Newton Abbot.

Pinney, R.C. (1999) Sussex Windmills and their Restoration – a 1970s perspective. Sussex Industrial History, 29, 1-40.

JEM (2006) Windmills at work in West Sussex – compiled from the work of M. L. Finch. S.B. Publications, Seaford.

Wailes, R. (1967) The English Windmill, 2^nd impression. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

External links

• Its website
• Windmill World page on the mill.
• Facebook page