NEWSLETTER NO. 8 - Sep 2005

More on Windmills

From “Windmills at Work in East Sussex” by Brigid Chapman from the research material of Maurice Lawson Finch, published by S B Publications 2004 – copyright holder Eileen Finch. Available from good bookshops price £7.50.

Brigid Chapman has this to say about the windmills of Wadhurst:

“The post mill at Riverhall may well have been the model for the painting on the postcard, pictured here, for Maurice Lawson Finch has this note in his file: On Rother mill stream FOR SALE JUNE 1983 MILL HOUSE, RIVERHALL WADHURST He has no further information on this mill but plenty on Riseden post mill, shown on maps from 1823 on a site south of Riseden Road (TQ 621303) [and used above for the Society’s newsletter].

It collapsed on a still day in 1910 and its roundhouse with the mill's fallen main post protruding from it was a feature of the garden of Windmill Cottage, Riseden Road, when Mr R Overton was living there. He had pulled the centre post down with the aid of a rope and a windlass in 1973 and set the top of it in a square flag-stoned flower bed in the lawn behind his house. And he had placed three of the millstones within the paving of the patio.

There is little surviving physical evidence of other mills around Wadhurst. The post mill that stood behind the Mill House Cousley Wood, which faces the B2100 Wadhurst to Lamberhurst road, was in a dilapidated state in 1885 and has now totally disappeared. Standen's mill, shown on Bestbeech Hill in 1795 and White's mill, shown near Butcher's Wood, on maps from 1866-1894, have also vanished without trace.”