Technical Notes on 16th and 17th Century London Windmills

REFERENCES

• J. Stow, A Survey of London, 1603 edn. (ed. C. L. Kingsford) ( Oxford, 1908), Vol. i, p. 330; Vol. ii, pp. 77, 370.
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• The Diary of Henry Machin, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from AD 1550 to AD 1563 (ed. J. G. Nichols) (Camden Society, London, 1848), p. 123.
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• Will of Sir George Barne, PROB 11/40 quire 13 ( dated 15 Feb., signed 16 Feb., proved 21 Mar., all 1557/8); for his date of death, see Machin's diary, op. cit. (2).
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• CLRO, Repertory of the Court of Aldermen, Vol. xiv, f. 13v. (also in Letter Book S, f. 159v.); see also Repertory, Vol. xiv, f. 9a. 'Leystowe' is a laystall, midden, or manure-heap.
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• Ibid., Vol. xv, f. 142v.; see also Vol. xv, if. 139v., 163v.
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• Ibid., Vol. xiv, f. 465v.
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• A survey of the manor of Finsbury taken on 30 December 1567 ( at least two later copies in CLRO) and printed in J. Stow, A Survey of London, 1633 edn. (ed. A. Munday).
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• CLRO, City Lands Grant Book I, f. 42r.; see also if. 48v., 57r.
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• Ibid., if. 88r. and v.
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• Ibid., if. 96v., 98v.; J. Stow, op. cit.(1), Vol. ii, p. 370; Parliamentary Survey of the Manor of Finsbury, 1649, in CLRO; Faithorne's map of London, 1658 (but perhaps surveyed 1640s).
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• John Leake's map of London after the Fire, 1669 (Guildhall Library).
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• John Ogilby and William Morgan's large-scale map of London, 1676, sheet 4 (southern end of Finsbury Field, which should cover all the mill sites) (Guildhall Library).
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• William Morgan's plan and panorama of London, surveyed 1681–82, sheets 3 and 11 (all of Finsbury Field) (Guildhall Library).
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• J. Stow, op. cit.(1), Vol. ii, p. 80.
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• M. J. R. Holmes, Moorfields in 1559: an Engraved Copper Plate from the Earliest Known Map of London, HMSO for the London Museum, 1963: good reduced-scale line-block reproduction of the map section, with commentary. I have since examined the reproduction in A Collection of Early Maps of London 1553–1667 (ed. J. Fisher) ( Harry Margary and Guildhall Library, Lympne Castle, Kent, and London, 1981), enlarged x 1.7 diameters over the reduced view. The ink lines are proportionately thinner and there is markedly more detail (e.g. the blocking-in is not so solid), and the poll of the right-hand mill is clearly round.
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• The specification for a major overhaul or rebuilding of a Kentish windmill by an Essex millwright in 1587 states that the millhouse (buck) must be 10 ft square and boarded, and must contain one pair of stones. Total weight of timber c. 10 tons, including the post 3 ft square and 20 ft (sic) long. Two timbers 14 in square by 14 ft long are probably the crosstrees. (K. G. Farries, Essex Windmills . . . (Skilton, London, 1981), Vol. i, pp. 96–97, using Essex Record Office D/DL E77). I cannot explain the incredible post length; Farries suggests there was a sunk post, which I doubt. The buck is only a few inches to one or two feet narrower than in a latterday mill, but is up to 10 ft shorter. A square or nearly square body was probably normal for the one-pair post mills which were universal in England up to the latter part of the 18th century.
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• M. J. R. Holmes, op. cit. (15); U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kiinstler, Vol. xxxvi, Leipzig, 1947.
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• J. Fisher, "Introduction", A Collection of Early Maps of London 1553–1667, op. cit (15).
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• The Life of Long Meg of Westminster. . . (for Robert Bird, London, 1635), reprinted in Miscellanea Antigua Anglicana (London, 1816), Vol i, Ch. 14, pp. 22–23. (First quoted in D. Smith, English Windmills (1932), Vol. ii, pp. 15–16, from an edition claimed to have been published in 1582.)
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• CLRO, Comptroller's City Lands Plans No. 80-9A; and adequately reproduced in J. R. Sewell, The Artillery Ground and Fields in Finsbury: Two Maps of 1641 and 1705 (London Topographical Society, 1977, Publication 120).
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• An Invention of Engines of Motion Lately Brought to Perfection. . . (printed by I.C. for Richard Woodnorth, London, 1651), p. 5 (BM 725 d 27). (Dedication to Samuel Hartlib, 10 March 1651 (i.e., 1651/2); at end, letter to Hartlib, 18 July 1651.)
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• Richard Bennett and John Elton, History of Corn Milling, Vol ii (1899), pp. 266–269.
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• U. Fitzherbert Here begynneth a ryght frutefull mater: and hath to name the Boke of Surueying and Improumetes (printed Richard Pynson, London, 1523), Ch. 40, f. 52v. (BM C 40 c 7). (Original BM press-mark; only accessioned BM 1894.) I think 'pycking' means 'numbering'; I'm not sure what the author means by 'lately'.
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• John Norden's view of London of 1600 (London Topographical Society, 1961, Publication 94).
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• F. G. Parsons, The History of St. Thomas's Hospital (1932), Vol. i, p. 216.
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• London County Council, Survey of London (1955), Vol. xxv (St. George's Fields, by Ida Darlington), p. 49; using CLRO, Journal of the Bridge House Committee.
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• Photo of panorama, about four-fifths full size, Guildhall Library, maps box V group 2. The theatre historian, J. L. Hotson, in The Times, 26 Mar. 1954, p. 7f., dates the original drawing post-1598, probably not long after 1600; it can scarcely post-date 1636.
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• The Malignants Trecherous and Bloody Plot against the Parliament and Citty of Lo: wch was by Gods Providence happily prevented May 31. 1643 (broadsheet, MS date 18 Aug., London, 1643) (BM 669 f 8 (22), alas now MIC. B.58/245/I9). The Mount Mill frame is very well reproduced in N. G. Brett-James, "The Fortification of London", London Topographical Record Illustrated, Vol. xiv (1928), opp. p. 18.
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• W. Lithgow, The Present Surveigh of London and Englands State . . . (London, 1643), 5th folio of text, verso.
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• Map of London published by John Seller (c.1680) (Guildhall Library).
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• Robert Modern, Philip Lea and Christopher Browne's map of London, 1700 ( Guildhall Library).
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• John Rocque's large-scale map of London, 1746 (Guildhall Library).
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• T. K. Cromwell, History. . . of Clerkenwell (1828), pp. 396–397; W. J. Pinks, History of Clerkenwell (1881, 2nd edn.), p. 283.
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• This putative origin seems not to predate Royal Commission for the Historical Monuments of England, Middlesex (1937), p. 29, whence into J. Salmon, "The Windmill in English Medieval Art", Journal of the British Archaeological Association, Series 3, Vol. vi (1941), p. 89 f., R. Wailes, The English Windmill (1954), p. 191, and the VCH Middlesex. For Betham, see DNB, GM, Venn. D. Lysons, The Environs of London (1795), Vol. ii, p. 439, confirms only that the old glass had been 'collected and placed' in the chancel windows by Betham. J. N. Brewer, London and Middlesex, Vol. iv (1816) (in E. W. Brayley and J. Britton's Beauties of England and Wales series), p. 587, merely mentions the glass. A. Heales, in Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Vol iv (1875) (Vol. iv Part 1, Jan. 1871), likens one non-mill quarry to one in King's College Chapel, and another much more closely to one in Milton church, Cambridgeshire; C. M. Neaves, A History of Greater Ealing (1931), p. 146, tries to identify the initials on the mill quarries with the names of obscure local worthies.
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• J. Salmon, op. cit. (34), calls them 16th century, which I agree with.
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