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Ted Hazen was, in his words

Master Miller, Millwright, Millstone Dresser; Consultant on grist mills & flour mills, water wheels & turbines, millstones, millstone grinding, & millstone dressing; long & short system roller mills; operating mills & mill restoration.

America's Leading Authority on the Restoration, Operation, Interpretation and Preservation of Historical Grist and Flour Mills.

He wrote extensively for publications such as Old Mill News, and from 1996 onwards had a huge and somewhat rambling website titled Theodore R. Hazen & Pond Lily Mill Restorations. The pages are primarily concerned with US water mills, but much of the material, especially the millwrighting and millstone dressing stuff has wide applicability. Ted Hazen died in 2013, aged 64, and his website was unmaintained after that. Since it was hosted by the free Angelfire hosting service, even with no updates, the sites pages lived on for more than a decade. However, in early 2026, Angelfile shut down, and all websites it hosted disappeared. As well as the main website, Ted had other linked websites also often hosted at Angelfire - I've no idea if this was done specifically to separate the material thematically, or whether it was to counter restrictions Angelfire may have had over hosting or maintaning large websites.

As I have previously done for the website of Tio Kinke, I have put together a page that provides links to prime parts of Ted's material, utilizing archives of the Wayback Machine.

Whilst the Mill Pictures website primarily concerns itself with watermills, with a catchy domain name like that, I'm somewhat surprised that I've not stumbled into the website before. The website has been running since at least 2011, run by Jim Miller (nominative determinism at work there!), who describes himself as a historian. Its tag line is "Mills and covered bridges from all over the world", but to be honest it's pretty much exclusively the USA, and just mills from there.

In 2011, the earliest archived version of the page I can find, it hosted 1514 locations, with 7256 photos. In 2026 it's actually only grown slightly, with 1842 locations, and 9921 pictures. Of those, the picture list indicates that there are only actually 3 barns, 9 school houses, and 2 bridges - the rest of the locations are mills. Of the international claim, there are but single locations in each of Australia, Germany, Italy, and South Africa, and 18 Canadian ones - all the rest are in the USA. The bio page describes the Oregon coast as home, but the coverage of that state only manages 31 mills - the top state is Pennsylvania with 864, with a sharp drop off after that, only Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland have more than 100 mills covered, and most states are less than 20. By an unfortunate typo, there's even 1 mill given as Massachusutts, which is only one behind the correctly spelled state!

The site unfortunately shows lots of signs of lack of maintenance. For example on the home page there is a banner announcing "now get it on your phone", advertising a mobile app, but neither the Android nor IPhone apps still exist. It appears these were 2018 era apps, and with the Android app recording only about 50 downloads in 3 years, I'm not surprised that the considerable effort required to keep these apps available has not been forthcoming. (The apps were created by AboutWD, presumably under contract, and I assume they were simply wrappers of the website content, rather than full native apps).

Another telltale sign of missing maintenance is, despite the few links to external sites, these links use http rather than the https that most sites now use.

I could only find 2 included windmills - their entries have been linked from the appropriate pages on this site.

I've long been aware of the (mock) mill that was shown in the Agricultural Hall at the US Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, principally via the widely reproduce stereo photo of the exhibit.

However with further research, I've realized that this was part of a large exhibit by the Hecker flour mill firm, who were a well established New York milling company.

I also discovered that the Agricultural Hall also showed a (model) of a wind engine driving a flour mill amongst its other exhibits.

The old mill was one of the exhibits that was kept on for a "permanent" exhibition that opened the next year, 1877, in the Main Hall.

I needed to consult the 1847 Post Office directory for London, and although this is available at Google Books search does not work for this. (As an aside, there is a very useful List of Directories of London Available Free on the Internet).

Thus I have inlined a number of milling relevant categories here, to make finding the information easier in future. Given the large amount of information that directories included, space was at a premium, and thus these entries are full of abbreviations, and the OCR process is prone to errors, so worth checking back to the original when using any of this information.

MILLERS.

Marked thus † are Steam.

Barrett Ashley, Narrow street, Ratcliff
Beaufoy & Co. South Lambeth
Bowditch Thos.H.1 Dorset st.Claphm.rd
† Burton Samuel, Broad street, Lambeth
† Carpenter Henry, Shad Thames
† Carpenter Wm. Greenwich; & 59 New Corn Exchange, Mark lane ; & 68 Lr. Shadwell ; & Stratford, Essex
† Chandler Thomas,18 Broad st.Lambeth
Chitty Edward, Jack's coffee house
† Christie Jas. E. & Wm. King'srd. Chels
Crabb Edmund, 52 Lower Shadwell
Dale Daniel, Lower road, Rotherhithe
Day & Payne, Lower Fore st. Lambeth
Dives Thomas, Mill wharf, Battersea
Dives Thos. Bolingbrk. gds. Battersea
Ellis Henry, Deptford Lower road
Farmer William, 17 London street
Freeman J.C.20 Grosvenor pl. Camberwl
† Holland Philip, King's rd. w. Chelsea
Hustler Wm. 1 Lr. Felix st. Hackney rd
Hutton Henry, Nine elms, Vauxhall
Kingsford & Barnwell, 4 Catherine et
† Kingsford Thos. & Chas. 60 Mark la.; Church st. Dptfrd.; & Mill la. Deptfrd
Long Edward, Old Ford
Mangles Jas. & Robt. 292 Rotherhithe st
† Pavitt Wm.& Co.247 High st. Wapping, & 24 Mark lane
Perks John Brown & Thos. Holway, Cherry garden stairs, Bermndsy. wall
Rayner William, Stratford, Essex
Sharp & Whitbourn, 8 Birchin lane, & at Barking
Simmonds & Morton, Belvedere rd. Lmb
Slipper Benjn. Blue Anchor rd. Bmndsy
Thorne Samuel, Mill wall, Poplar
Vines & Lewis, 35 Crutchedfriars
Walter Hen. Canal bridge, Old Kent rd
Ward Joseph, 12 Mark lane
Woodhams Jas.& Josiah, Bromley,Mdsx
Yeoman James,10 Hall pl.Lr.Kenngtn.la

MILL MAKERS.

See also Scale & Weight Makers.
Marked thus * are Sugar.
Marked thus † are Steel.

Bartlett John, 182 Bishpgt. st. without
Collinge Ch.&Co.64Bridge rd.Lambeth
Fletcher Geo.38 Gloucester st. Lambeth
Kent Jolin, 8 Noble st. Goswell st
Leneh Saml 34Liverpool st.Bishopsgate
† Neal Thos. 63 St. John st. Clerkenwell
Roberts Thos. 3 Union st. Bishopsgate
† Savage Alfred, 43 Eastel
Tanner Alfred O. 4 New Basinghall st
White James, 266 High Holborn
Whitmee John, 70 St. John st. Clerkenwell; 18 Fenchurch buildings, & 2
Brunswick mews, Brunswick sq
Woodbine Henry, 03 Tooley st

MILLSTONE MAKERS.

Baker Jolin, Brook's wharf, Tooley st
Corcoran B. & Co. (french), 36 Mark la
Hughes Mrs. S. & Sons, 8 Gt. Dover sta
LuckinsGeo.32Bridge ho.pl.Nwngtn.cau

MILLWRIGHTS.

See also Engineers.
Marked thus † are Engineers.
Marked thus * are Smiths.

AdamsonWm.5John st.Church la. Whtep
† Balmer Thos. 8 Abbey st. Bermondsey
† Blyth John & Alf. 9 Fore st. Limehouse
† Chambers Robt.W.24Princes st.Lambh
Colley Wm.John,SSt.George's row, Piml
Collinge C. & Co.64 Bridge rd. Lambeth
† Crickmer Robt. Spa road, Bermondsey
† Donkin Bryan & Co. Blue Anchor road
Dryden Wm. 10 Kinaston st. Lambeth
† Easton & Amos, Grove,Gt.Guildford st. Boro', & Orange st. Leicester square
† Fox Henry, 20 St. Johin street, & 5 & 6 Northampton st. Clerkenwell
† Fox Wm. 56 Compton st. Clerkenwell
† Greener Thomas, 1 Rose lane, Rateliff
† Holman Jas.33 Banlzephon st.Brmudsy
†* Hosking John, 25 Webber st. New cut
† Hunter & English, Bow
Lloyd Thos. 15 Old street rd. St. Luke's
† Lumley Mrs. Mary, 65 Low, Shadwell
† M.Latchie Rt. 3 Cottage la. Com. rd. ea
Manning Benjn. 2 Russell st. Blackwall
Matterface Abm.46Granby st. Waterl.rd
Matterface G.3Blk.Lion yd.Wlitchpl. rd
Meade Edwd. 14 Winter ter. Borough
† Merrin Jolin, 8 Waterloo tr.Coml. rd.ea
† Middleton Thos. 3 Loman st. Borough
†* Molyneux Saml.E.26 City road, Finsby
† Moreland Rd.&Co.149 Old st. St.Luke's
† Newton & Worssum, Kingsland basin
† Pache Win. 5 Parker's row, Dockhead
† Parsson Wm.N.34Gravel la.Southwark
†* Pontifex Edm.&Wm. & Wood,Shoe la
† Pontifex Jacklin & Co. 54&55Shoe lane
Pontifex & Mallory,15Up.St. Martin's la
† Robinson Charles, Pimlico road
† Sadler William F. 96 Tooley st
† Scott G. 5 & 6 King st. Commercl. rd.ea
† Smith Andrew, 69 Princesst. Leicester sq.Millwall,Pplr.&2Wht. Lion ct.Crnhl
Thompson Geo. & Sons, Eccleston st. ea
WorssamGeo.J.25G.Mitchell st.St.Luks
    

I've recently become aware of a couple of comparatively recent demolitions of UK windmills, so I thought it worth tabulating the windmills remains which have been demolished this century.

lost	mill	reason
2022	Common Mill, Spalding, Lincolnshire	Stump demolished when site redeveloped for housing
prior to July 2021	South Dissington (mock mill)	Simply demolished to clear up the property
between 2011 and 2015	Wallace's Mill, Alford, Lincolnshire	Stump demolished for new housing development
15th Sept 2005	Chislet Windmill, Chislet, Kent	Destroyed by fire, replaced by residential mock
2003	Tower mill, Kenn, Somerset	Demolished, mock tower later built nearby

Whilst having a look at newly released books, I came across the children's book "Emily's Adventures: Milling Flour, The Windmill" which was published earlier this year.

According to the author's bio

Deborah Clapham is a Worcestershire-based author with a passion for bringing the forgotten lives of the nineteenth century into the light. Drawing inspiration from the region's rich industrial heritage, she explores the lives, struggles, and quiet resilience of ordinary people whose stories have often been overlooked by history.
With a keen eye for historical detail and a deep appreciation for the human spirit, Deborah brings the past vividly to life. Her stories echo with the clang of hammers in dim workshops, the warmth of hearth-lit homes, and the determination of families facing hardship. Through emotionally rich and authentic storytelling, she invites readers to step beyond the pages of history and experience the hopes, challenges, and courage of those who lived it.
Rooted in her love of Worcestershire and its history, Deborah's work celebrates the communities and forgotten voices that helped shape the world around them, ensuring that the lives of ordinary people are remembered and their stories continue to resonate with readers today.

I've highlighted the bit about a eye for detail, since it's clear from the book cover that no such eye has been applied here.

The cover shows a vaguely Midlands style post mill (where the buck is part supported on the roundhouse walls), where the example at Avoncroft is indeed in Worcestershire where the author lives. Unusually the buck shows vertical weatherboarding, which is not really common. The image shows shadows cast by the doorway and the buck as if the the sun is high in the sky to the left of the picture, yet the lower left sail casts no shadows. The lower right sail does cast a strong shadow (against a wall that is itself in shadow!), as if the sun is now in the upper right of the picture, yet this shadow is both incomplete, and yet also takes concrete form, becoming part of the actual sail itself in a sort of Escher like merging of objects. Of the sails, 3 rotate anticlockwise, but the lower right one is set to rotate clockwise! The sails are mounted in places to the front of the stocks, but also merging with, and behind the stocks. It's hard to make sense of what form the poll end and sail attachment takes. In some places as expected we can see the sky or other parts of the mill through the open sail frames, yet in other places the sails are opaque, showing a different colour than the sky behind.

In conclusion, this book cover is an AI generated pile of slop - I don't hold out much hope for the quality of the actual contents of the book itself. Looking at the catalogue entry, this is unsurprisingly a self published book - I hope no respectable editor would have handled such AI generated material. Kids certainly deserve better.

Not that it was in any doubt, but I uploaded the image to SynthID Detector. It reported

SynthID was detected
This media was made or edited with Google AI
Please note that this media may have been edited further since then.

Bourne watermill, Colchester is one of the recipients of the 2026 Heritage at Risk Capital Fund awards.

According to the Historic England entry on the award,

Bourne Mill connected
Tendring District Council will use the funding to conserve and repair Bourne Mill, addressing water ingress, failing roof coverings, masonry defects, deteriorating historic joinery and the waterwheel structure through a conservation-led programme of works.
The funding will safeguard the heritage significance of Bourne Mill and prevent further deterioration, while enabling the site to reopen as a flexible heritage and community resource. This will support public access, learning, volunteering and community participation, as well as opportunities for heritage skills learning through partnerships with educational institutions.
Listed Grade I
Grant: £224,200

That entry raises a few questions:

• Bourne Mill is a National Trust property (bought by them in 1936), so unclear why Tendring District Council is the recipient of this grant.
• The mill is not even in the Tendring District Council area, which starts about a mile east of the mill, and there is no mention of the mill on the Tendring Council website.
• Those plans for reopening as a community resource again make no mention of the National Trust which already open the property.

The mill previously had about £4000 of repairs done in 2010, so this grant is a considerable advance on that amount.

I'm not sure when it was published, but according to the final lines of the text, the Sussex volume of Robert Hale's Country Book Series was written by Esther Meynell between Jan 1944 and Jan 1945. In the Foreword, Esther describes herself thus:

I would not dare to call myself an archaeologist: I am but a beginner, an amateur - which means a lover - of the subject.

Whilst the immediate subject is archaeology, it's clear that Esther was a lover of Sussex, and this is generally a delightful book to read. Time has of course moved on; the Piltdown Man has long been understood as a hoax, yet here it is presented as fact, and our understanding of history has changed in so many other areas.

It's interesting however to read the words Esther has to say on Sussex windmills:

Visible relics

The visible relics of the old life on the land in Sussex are all beautiful. The old farmhouse and cottages, the tithe barns, the massive brick-built dovecots, the windmills - so many of which have vanished away and so few of which are any longer in use - the watermills, one or two of which still grind flour and as watermills are much older than windmills, so it is good that they have held out longer against disuse and decay.

Jack and Jill

Cobbett, when he rode about Sussex would see an abundance of windmills - so naturally at home on the breezy chalk hills and on the rising ground and little eminences that diversify the Weald. Most of these windmills have now tumbled down from disuse and neglect, or succumbed to their natural enemy, fire. But, happily the most famous, because the most prominent, pair of windmills in Sussex still survive to adorn the scene - they are known throughout the county as Jack and Jill, most appropriately as they've certainly gone up the hill, though the pails of water have to be fetched to those who dwell in them. These two mills are so admirably sited on the crest of the Down as to be almost as important in the landscape as the ring on Chanctonbury's head. It is long since they did any work, and for a time they were in peril of the fate of many other Sussex windmills, but they are now in good hands and have become the twin guardians of what must be the most breezy and elevated dwelling in the country, set in untouched Downland and commanding amazing views from the topmost storey of Jack, the black tower-mill. The variety of shape in the two mills which stand so friendlily together adds to their enchantment - there is a touch of fairy-tale about them, as though they had walked there from some mysterious region for the love of Sussex. Jack is a black tower-mill and Jill is a white post-mill. Adjoining the tower-mill Jack is the round house, all that remains of the little tower-mill, found too small to draw full benefit from the powerful winds, which Jack was built to replace. This round-house is all that remains of one of the oldest mills in Sussex, and is supposed to be something like 300 years old.
An interesting bit of Jill's history is that she is that rare thing, a travelled windmill. She was built on the Dyke Hill above Brighton in 1821, and was later moved all the distance across the downs to the elevated site above the retired little village of Clayton, where she now spends an honoured old age. This removal was accomplished by an immense team of oxen, and must have been a notable sight.

Note: The roundhouse alongside Jack is from Duncton Gate post mill, not a tower mill. This may just be a simple editing error, rather than any deeper misunderstanding of the nature of this "round house".

Moving a windmill

In Sussex Notes and Queries for 1886, there is an account of the moving of another mill : "In 1797 a miller at Brighton, in the presence of many thousand spectators, removed his windmill whole, and literally as he worked her, with the help of 36 yoke of oxen and a number of men, across the plains to a brow near Withdean, a distance of more than a mile, where he fixed her without the smallest accident. The above mill stood to the westward of Brighton, very near the edge of the cliff, and had long being complained of as a nuisance which caused the removal. The neighbouring farmers accommodated him with their oxen for the purpose, gratis."

Ditchling

Not very far away from Jack and Jill above the village of Clayton, on that sudden eminence called Lodge Hill, which runs down to Ditchling, is another white post-mill, that has had its sails restored and has become a protected object. One cannot but feel that these poor pensioned mills of an age which has no use for the true stone-miller's art and mystery, would so much prefer to be doing their proper job. They were not made as objects to adorn the landscape, but to produce the whole-wheat flour to make man's bread. The beautiful natural sequence of the growing corn to the cottage loaf, in which the mill played an essential part, is broken.

Cross in Hand and Chailey

One of the post-mills that is still working - though not to grind flour - is at Cross-in-Hand. And almost in the very centre of Sussex, on high and breezy Chailey North Common, is one of the prettiest and most shapely white smock mills in the whole county. Beside it stands a large pointed clipped yew tree, which looks as though it had come from a gigantic Noah's ark - indeed, both the white mill and the everlasting green tree have the look of enchanting outsize toys. The mill is, happily and suitably, in the hands of the Chailey Heritage Craft Schools, which are doing such marvellous work for crippled children.

Winchelsea

From this well-cared-for mill it is a long stretch to the derelict old Saint Leonard's mill at Winchelsea. When I last saw this mill it had the most completely haunted air. It was evident that the saint, who used to keep watch over Winchelsea, had long forgotten his poor mill. But old though the mill is (it was built about 1760) that is a date long past the great days of Winchelsea. But it is very old for a wooden post-mill, and makes it definitely an historic relic, so it is good to know that this ancient Mill has now been restored to life.

Dwelling Houses

A certain number of windmills in Sussex have been saved from complete extinction, even if sometimes considerably altered in appearance, by being made into dwelling houses. There is one hidden away up Pipes Passage in Lewes, and another at West Chiltington, which is a black smock-mill, still retaining its shutterless sweeps and fantail, both of which are painted white, so that it keeps much of the appearance of a working windmill. There is something very fascinating about a windmill house, and always great views from the top story.

Numbers

But the vital working windmill is a sadly diminishing object in the Sussex countryside. The Reverend Peter Hemming in his valuable book on Windmills in Sussex has made a list (which he does not claim is complete, but is eloquent enough of windmill history to-day) of active, disused and completely vanish Mills in the county. Of post-mills there are two in use, sixteen disused, and forty-seven vanished away. Of smock-mills, in the same order, there are two, twelve and nineteen. Of tower-mills, There are two, nine and five.

Miller's pride

It is a sad tale for the windmill, like the watermill which is historically so much older, is associated with one of the fundamental needs of mankind. And it is the one building raised by human hands and rooted in the ground which yet seems endowed with some vital life of its own. There was a recognition of this, as well as the old religious feeling which linked the fruitful earth with the God "from all from whom all blessings flow," in what was called "the miller's pride" - when at the end of the day's good work, the four sails were placed in the shape of the Cross.

Though it's not widely advertised as such, Heritage Open Days is a festival run by the National Trust. Many National Trust buildings offer free entry for the festival, which runs from 11-20th September this year, and a large number of other buildings owned by a huge variety of other owners are also open for free on some days of the festival.

Although the National Trust themselves seem to be somewhat ambivalent about the mills in their care at the moment (at least 3 of them are currently closed, with no information available from the Trust as to if or when they will reopen), the Heritage Open Days website footer features a windmill silhouette (unfortunately the designer seems to have simply used clip art to form this - with what looks like a Massachusetts mill!) and a number of windmills and watermills are taking part.

Properties that take part are not always generally publicly accessible, and there is one windmill in this year's festival that is in this category - that of Dunstable windmill which is now used as a Sea Cadet headquarters. This property was open on 12th Sept, though I haven't seen a report by someone who visited. The listing noted

The Ship Without Sails
Discover the story of Dunstable Windmill and the Sea Cadets this HODs. Throughout the day, there will be continuous tours, talks, and information.

The Barking Heritage Mural was created by Jake Attewell in 2021, on the gable wall of the McDonald's at 41 East Street, Barking. The design represents Barking's Lost Heritage, and received funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. It shows the Wellington windmill, as well as Barking Quay, Barking Abbey, the bascule bridge, and buildings from the street it is painted on.

I know that real journalism is a difficult proposition in these times, but I hate the fact that even prestigious national newspapers like The Times resort to producing lazy and inaccurate (clickbait) listicles such as 22 of the best unusual places to stay in the UK.

This one opens with "We've roamed the UK to turn up 22 of the most curious places to stay", but there is no evidence that the writer did anything other than let their fingers roam over their computer keyboard. Although the author's byline describes him as a photographer, the photos in the article are credited to either a stock agency, or to booking/airbnb, or in some cases they couldn't even be bothered to include a photo. Rather than link directly to the property being listed, the links given route through a site that by its very name admits they skim a commission off of the transaction.

The current version of this article is headlined with a Getty Images photo of Llancayo windmill, which appears at number 22 in the list. There it is given a single £ rating, indicating it's at the cheap end of the accommodation scale. That shows how little care has been taken in producing the text - staying at the windmill costs about £6000 (3 night minimum, at £2000 per night), which is hardly cheap. (One of the other properties which has been given a £££ rating has stays from £380, which is comparatively economic). The windmill property does sleep up to 12, but the text misleadingly says there are 6 round rooms, across 5 floors (you can instantly see the maths doesn't work out there!), but actually there are only 2 bedrooms in the windmill tower, with the other 4 in the decidedly rectangular building alongside (a former drying store). Although it has fake sails (made from galvanized steel), and a steel and fiberglass domed cap, there is no milling machinery left in the mill. The fantail is functional to rotate the sails to face into the wind. The top floor of the property is inaccessible to renters, being described as the generator room.

Although this is new August 2026 refresh of this article, it has been around for a few years. An earlier version from 2023 titled 25 of the best unusual places to stay in the UK has 24 places to stay (you see the lack of attention to detail when they can't even count correctly). Llancayo windmill was also on that list.

The converted windmill at Gidding Rd, Sawtry has sold via an online auction. I don't often link to mills for sale, for a number of reasons, including the fact that the sales particulars go offline very quickly, and so the links are very fragile. I've experimented a bit here - I've used the Internet Archive to archive the sales page, and linked to its archive page.

It's not perfect - the archive page tries to load the bidding panel, and that just sits there spinning, the map preview does not appear, and the slideshow is inoperable. For the record, with a guide price of £320,000, there were 3 bidders, and the price went up in £5000 increments, with the final price on 2nd Sept 2026 being £350,000. (On top of that there were charges of approximately another £3000.)

I'd not spotted it before, but before going to auction, the property was for sale via estate agents. The Google Streetview imagery from June 2026 shows a William H Brown sales board at the property.

From an aesthetic point of view, the conversion is pretty unattractive. This was a smock mill, and the retained smock tower has had huge windows inserted into it, and also in to the base. These are only on the sides of the tower that face away from the attached house. The smock is topped of with an 8 sided sloping roof, rather than a windmill cap. The auction particular photos show a vacant property (presumably why it went to auction), and the empty rooms show that no machinery was retained in the conversion. (Yes, one of the reasons I have an interest in sales particulars even of converted mills is that the photos included can provide a rare opportunity to see the interiors of otherwise inaccessible mills).

Via the Minutes of a meeting of Burnham Overy Parish Council held on Monday 27th July 2026

Save Burnham Overy Windmill - Peter Nicholson from the National Trust attended the meeting (during his holiday) and gave an update on progress. A small group of interested individuals, including an architect, were forming a charity to take over the Windmill and seek funding. The charity would lease the Windmill from the National Trust (NT) and take responsibility for the asset. Peter confirmed that the NT would be able to long-term lease the Windmill to such an entity, but would not be able to sell the Windmill, as it would become a Community Asset. The use of humidifiers over the past year has helped the Windmill dry out. Once formed, the charity would seek seed funding for a feasibility study, followed by capital funding for restoration and ongoing maintenance. The Council confirmed that they will be in regular contact with the NT through Peter. Potential future uses for the Windmill include open days and studio space for artists and designers with any commission from art sales contributing to ongoing maintenance were also ideas for the future. The Parish Council would be kept informed as plans develop. Anyone interested in joining the group setting up the charity can obtain details from the NT.

There's an ambiguous sentence there, where Peter is confirming that the NT is not able to sell the windmill. I think the meaning is that "Since the mill will become a Community Asset, a long term lease can be arranged instead of a sale". (i.e this is not the alternative reading that the reason for not selling the windmill is that it would then become a Community Asset. NT is required to hold items placed in its care, in their words "for everyone, for ever"). This specifically appears to rule out providing a long term lease to someone who planned a private, not public future for the mill.

I have reached out to the NT to ask them for details about joining the group.

Movie Scene Map is a slick new interactive map that allows you to see where films were shot, or alternatively what films were made at a specific location. They claim to have 15,716 locations, 13,343 films, series, games, anime & manga, across 166 countries. However none of that is original material - they are simply presenting data that has been entered elsewhere (mostly Wikidata and Wikipedia).

I only found a very few mills included:

• Cobstone windmill appearing in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• Mapledurham watermill appearing in The Eagle has Landed
• Watermill Danemark (in the Czech Republic) appearing in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Moulin de Claude François appearing in My Way

You will find a lot of other film locations on my page of Mills in TV and Films.

Over the past few years, the National Trust have produced a series of pin badges for their properties. These badges are available for a (suggested) donation, and are generally exclusive to the property they represent.

There's a number of mill properties that have such badges, and they generally look pretty attractive. (The one badge that I would say is an exception to this is that from Bembridge windmill, where the badge is a very poor representation of the actual mill, with very thin sails and other inaccuracies).

There are additional mill badges that I have not tracked down examples of:

• Flatford Mill - not sure if there is a badge of the mill, or just Willy Lott's Cottage
• An alternative Houghton badge showing just the mill itself
• Orford Ness, where the badge doesn't show a mill, but in some years the backing card shows the mock windmill tower which housed experimental radar equipment

The badge for Winchester City mill shows an otter, rather than any specific mill related artifact or building.

Some of these can be seen on various collectors pages:

• NT badges
• NT badges
• NT badges index

Ignore the "photo" in this article, since it's AI generated, but Between two Japanese islands a tidal turbine on the seabed is sending 1.1 megawatts ashore through a single cable is an interesting read about a tidal turbine in the Naru Strait, in the Goto Islands off Nagasaki, Japan. This second generation turbine (replacing a 500kW that was end of life'd in 2021) is rated at 1.1MW, and came online in 2025. It was built in the UK, and has 3 carbon fibre blades - this was apparently chosen over steel, because a broken carbon blade sinks, so is not a shipping hazard. (The reasoning here is not explained - I can't immediately see why a steel blade would instead float!)

The article makes a couple of further points

1. Since tides are predictable, you can be sure of the output this turbine will generate, even decades ahead, eliminating the need for storage and backup energy sources if the weather does no cooperate
2. Actually tides are not ideal - since they change direction, and have slack periods. An even greater gaol is harnessing the ocean currents that flow just as predictably, but in a single direction, moving huge quantities of water

With news that there is more restoration work planned for Halnaker windmill, I thought it useful to document the last round of restoration in 2017, as covered by Sussex World published on 9/10/17. It noted then that:

• work had been completed to replace the tiled exterior and repair the white cap and balconies
• refitting sails (sweeps) and the door were supposedly held off till Spring [Note: the sweeps were not placed back on the mill]
• the mill had been fenced off since May 2013 after vandals brought down an internal beam, and investigations at the time uncovered other defects including loose tiles, and a failing "spar" [not sure exactly what is meany by this term]

When subsequently linking back to that news report, Sussex World adds the additional information that the refurbishment was done by Fowlers, and cost £137,000.

West Sussex County Council have just approved a £0.5M + VAT contract "to conserve and restore in part" Halnaker windmill. The contract has been awarded to Fowlers Building Contractors Ltd, who were the firm who did the last lot of work on the mill, back in 2017 when the lime render was repaired, and new tiles hung on the tower.

However, I can't find what the actual works planned are (though I have reached out to the Council for more information). No planning application has been submitted, and there are no supporting documents about the decision on the council website. Since the decision was individually decided by Andrew Edwards, Service Director of Property and Assets, there was no meeting to minute. I'm pleased that in these days of pressure on council spending, the decision notes that "Not supporting the project was rejected due to Heritage Conservation obligations."

The mill does not have sails on it at the moment, so restoring those may well be in the plan, but that shouldn't cost the full approved budget.

A blog post Daniel Halladay and His Windmill: Researching Lesser Told Histories has been posted on the Library of Congress blog. It's authored by 2026 Junior Fellow Maile McCall, and tries to uncover a little of the personal history of Daniel Halladay, rather than the history of his inventions and company. Ultimately it doesn't uncover much - a few newspaper mentions including his obituary, but no journals or personal correspondence that would have given deeper insights in to his life.

For the record, the pertinent facts on Daniel Halladay include:

• born on November 24, 1826, in Marlboro, VT
• early career included work as a mechanic's apprentice and installing machinery at the U.S. government armoury at Harper's Ferry, before settling in Ellington, Connecticut
• Original windmill patent number 11,629 granted August 29, 1854, reissued as 4,064, to extend for 7 more years from July 5, 1870
• Formed the Halladay Windmill Company, which moved first to Chicago, then to Batavia, where the company operated as the U.S. Wind Engine and Pump Company
• Improved windmill covered by patent 190,430 on May 8, 1877
• Later moved to Santa Ana, CA, where he became a banker and financier
• Died March 1, 1916, at the age of 89, leaving an estate of $147,000

It's a while since I've noticed a magazine cover with a subject relevant to this site, so I was initially pleased to see that the July 2026 issue of Physics World magazine has a couple of wind turbines shown on its cover. However on closer inspection, I see this is to my mind a pretty terrible cover - this is not a photo of real wind turbines, but instead is a very crude computer drawing of turbines, comprised of lines and poorly shaded triangles. From the credit inside the magazine, I traced the source to this Shutterstock image. It looks as if they simply did a search of stock photos for wind turbine and solar panels, and took the first image it came up with.

The cover image accompanies an interior feature titled "What physicists can do to support the green economy". This feature itself is a further recycling of existing material - it's a set of edited extracts from a panel debate held at the Institute of Physics in London.

As of today, a search of the Wikimedia Commons for windmill returns 79,878 images, which is a respectable size result. (This ignores the fact that a keyword search may in fact bring up results that are not actually of windmills - normally picking up on place names that include the word). However, not all the images are original to Wikimedia - a sizeable proportion have been copied there from other freely usable photo archives. In particular, if you repeat the search excluding Geograph then the number drops to 66,929, so 12,949 images representing 16% of the total have simply been harvested (as the Geograph licence allows) from that other archive.

Other Archive	number	percent	notes
Geograph	12949	16%	UK geolocated images
flickr	4881	6%	photo sharing site
Panoramio	2386	3%	defunct geophoto site from Google
David Rumsey	1848	2%	maps, but also general engravings
DPLA	1753	2%	many digitized patents
Library of Congress	975	1%
New York Public Library	125	0.1%	includes a collection of stereocards
Finnish Heritage Agency	98	0.1%

There are probably more external archives contributing to the Wikipedia Commons number as well. An alternative way to determine a more accurate number of original images in the archive is to include "own work" in the search, which returns about 24000 images. Many of the images in the archive get used on Wikipedia pages, but by no means all of them - some people simply use the Commons as a way to publish their own photos with no particular use case in mind.

Since we can search via recency, we can see what has been added recently to the Commons, of which the following caught my eye:

• Crowd of people witnessing the 2026 solar eclipse at Brill Windmill
• 10 images of Wray Common windmill in July 2026
• 100's of images from the now out of copyright Watermills and Windmills by William Coles Finch
• 72 images from English Windmills v1 by I M Batten, 1930
• A significant upload from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) including many digitized patents
• An upload from the Finnish Heritage Agency

A survey on London's art neighbourhoods alerted me to the mural Big Splash painted by Christine Thomas on the wall of 20 Strathleven Road, Brixton in 1985. It shows an overshot waterwheel on the side of a building, where people are looking out from the windows and deck, and more people are bathing in the lower millpond, which is surrounded by foliage and birdlife. According to Brixton Murals it represents the now hidden river Effra.

Brixton windmill has been represented sequentially by 2 locals murals in Lyham Road. The earlier one by Mick Harrison and Caroline Thorp, was created in 1983, but had faded and become damaged, so was painted over by a new design by Positive Arts in May 2012, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Parts of the original composition around the edge were recreated, but the central view of the mill differs. The sails shown on the mural are very inaccurate!

Don't expect great accuracy (after all it's produced by the notoriously inaccurate QI elves, who consider that a quick web search counts as being "research"), but there's a fairly entertaining bit about wind turbines and windmills at the start of a recent episode of No Such Thing as a Fish entitled No such thing as half past purple.

They start by talking about the wind turbine installed in 1941 at Grandpa's Knob, Vermont, then mention mass produced wind engines widely used in America (though say they were used for grinding corn on farms, when they were mostly for pumping water). A question on "is there a society to do with wind turbines and windmills" gets the reply of not having found one (I said their research was shallow!), and the language of windmill sails (mourning, celebration etc) is covered, but not explained very clearly. A ramble around the direction of rotation of wind turbines is concluded with a mention of the Betz limit of how much power can be extracted from the wind. Finally there's coverage of James Blyth's pioneering work, though his 1887 wind turbine was certainly not the first to generate electricity.

Via a Facebook post on Windmill Hoppers, millwright Tim Whiting informs us that Saxtead Green post mill trestle has become very unsafe, and that quick works have taken place to secure the mill. To reduce the weight on the buck, the sails have been removed, and the buck is held up by guy lines.

The dramatic events started with the discovery of a loose chunk of oak on the floor, which lead to finding that one quarterbar had burst its mortice. Within a week a second quarterbar did the same, and soon there was a massive crack in the main post - described by Tim as making the trestle essentially "a snapped carrot". Planning is taking place to lift the buck off of the post.

The Octopus Energy Tech Summit took place in Battersea Park on 22th June 2026. There about 4000 delegates heard from a variety of business and political leaders, talking about energy. Whilst Octopus is amongst other things a gas supplier, the geopolitical environment, and the record breaking temperatures we are currently experiencing had all sides agreeing that electrification of our energy usage is where we need to be.

The subject of wind turbines got coverage in various ways

• the outside area was dominated by "Fat Boy Spin", which is one of a number of small, essentially portable wind turbines, that Octopus use at things such as festivals and temporary installations, to provide green power to these events. The turbine was also present last year, but the local council had refused permission for it to be producing electricity. Similarly this year no permission was given, and although the tips of the turbine blades were turned to act as air brakes, the hub was not locked, so at times when the wind was cooperating, the turbine was slowly turning.
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, with Battersea power station chimneys visible behind, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, showing banners below, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, as Octopus plushies were distributed to the attendees, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
  

  Portable wind turbine Fat Boy Spin at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, with an octopus tentacle, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• The banners at the base of the turbine gave a potted, and not strictly accurate "History of wind turbines..."
  

  Banner giving an approximate history of wind turbines at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• Inside by the Nerd Shack there was an even tinier wind turbine, which I take was non-functional, just for decoration!
  

  Interior decorative wind turbine by the Nerd Shack at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• Much of the furniture in the top floor rest area consisted of upcycled wind turbine blades
  

  Chill out furniture at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, made from upcycled wind turbine blades, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• One of the sessions was a fireside chat with William Kamkwamba, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", covering the story of his scratch built wind turbine, which is now subject of a West End musical by the RSC.
  

  William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, being interviewed by Zoisa North-Bond at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, Battersea, 22/6/26
  © Mark Berry
• This was followed by a video update on Octopus' first wind farm in Africa, which has been built in collaboration with Idris Elba's foundation. Sierra Leone wind farm