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Wilton Windmill
20 Wiltshire Scenes (19)
The Domesday Book of 1086 listed 197 mills in Wiltshire... all powered by water and worked either in the finishing of woolen cloth (known as fulling) or grinding corn. Wiltshire being an agricultural county almost all the mills were involved with the latter. By the late 12th century wind power began to be used on a wider scale... the earliest recorded windmill in the county being located at Ebeleborn, now known as Ebbesbourne Wake, in 1248.
Between then and the 18th century there may have been another hundred or so constructed although by then there were as few as a score in use... wind may have been in plentiful supply on the Wiltshire Downs but grinding stones were not, being imported at great expense from Derbyshire and France. With the rapidly increasing use of steam power during the Industrial Revolution the use of natural wind power declined and by the outbreak of the Great War the last remaining working windmill in Wiltshire, that at Wilton, turned for the last time.
There are two places in the county bearing the name Wilton... the larger town to the south giving it's name to Wiltshire, being it's capital in the 8th century, as well as to the famous Wilton carpet name. Further to the north, nestled in the Vale of Pewsey just to the south of Marlborough and Hungerford lies the smaller village of Wilton with it's windmill on a nearby hill. The Old English word wull-tun meant "a farm where wool is prepared or stored" giving the alternative spellings of this location as Wulton 1227, Wolton 1289, Woultone 1327 and Wilton 1402.
Wilton Mill was constructed in 1821 at a cost of around £500 to replace seven water mills which had been made inoperative by the completion of the Kennet and Avon Canal - water-borne transport being more important at the time - and the Crofton Pumping Station which was needed to supply water to a 19-mile stretch of the canal. After being in disuse and disrepair for more than 50 years the mill was purchased in 1971 by Wiltshire County Council who leased it to the Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust. The eventual cost of restoring the mill a century and a half after it was built was in the region of £25,000, but it is the only one working in Wessex.
Restoration of the mill was first mooted by the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society and temporary remedial work was carried out in 1970, the building being listed as of Grade II of "special architectural and historical" interest. The staging seen today was a feature added during restoration which took four years... the sails turning again in 1976. Luckily all of the original machinery remained although all of the oak beams, elm floors and other timbers had to be renewed.
Some statistics about the mill and its operation are...
Height of structure to top of cap - 46' 8"
Width of structure at base - 20' 7"
Weight of cap, sails and fantail - 15 tons
Length of sail - 32'
Speed of sail rotation 15.5 rpm.
Speed at tip of sail - 35 mph.
Weight of a French 4' mill stone - 1 ton
Flour production in a fair wind - 1 to 2 cwt. per hour
Flour production in a strong wind - 2 to 3 cwt. per hour
Now operated by the Wilton Windmill Society the mill opens during the summer (check for times) and recently period demonstrations have taken place to thresh and mill locally grown sheaves of wheat (article to follow soon)... before baking bread from it the same day. The fresh smell, if not the noise, would no doubt attract hungry many visitors from far and wide!
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