Heckington Windmill


Heckington Windmill is the only eight-sailed tower windmill still standing in the United Kingdom with its sails intact.
Heckington is located between Sleaford and Boston in Lincolnshire, England. The mill stands very close to Heckington railway station, hence its name of the Station Mill in the 19th century. The windmill is designated a Grade I listed building.

Construction

It was built in 1830 to plans by millwright Edward Ingledew for her first owner and founder Michael Hare of red brick, the outer walls being tarred, as a five-sailed windmill with Sutton's single patent sails providing longitudinal shutters on both sides of the backs. The mill has six storeys called "floors": ground floor, meal floor, stone floor, lower bin floor, upper bin floor, dust or cap floor.

History

At first the five-armed sail-cross drove three pairs of stones and milled grain for a 60-year period of time. But Hare died before April 1834, and the mill owner's widow, Ann Hare , was left with a young son, she remarried a local miller Sleightholme Nash around 1836. The mill eventually passed to Joseph Nash who became its last miller before its defunction in 1890. A tail-wind made the sails run backwards after the destruction of the fantail by lightning leaving the cap rotating uncontrolled, blew off the entire cap with the curb smashing it with parts of the upper gear and all the five sails to pieces, and destroyed the tower rim. Nash abandoned the wrecked mill.
In 1891 John Pocklington of Wyberton mill had bought the eight-sailed mill cap with gear of the 78-year-old defunct Tuxford's mill for just £72 at auction in Boston without any plans. As a condition of the deal, he had to remove all the machinery from the mill site. So he was in an urgent need for a suitable mill stump to mount the cap on, as he had no place to put his new acquisition. He bought the wrecked Heckington mill, and, from 1891 until early 1892, he fitted the white onion-shaped and fantail-driven Tuxford's Mill cap to the Heckington Mill and set it working for the following 54 years. Later on he installed a large circular saw-mill in a shed on one side, also driven by wind-power using line-shafts. It was used to make elm boards for coffins. John Pocklington was very successful in milling, baking, building, sawing, and farming. In that time and even up to today the mill was also called the Pocklington's Mill.
After Pocklington's death in 1941 the mill stopped working in 1946 for the next 40 years. The shutters were removed from the sails. In 1953 the mill came into the hands of Kesteven County Council who made the first restorations preventing the fine old mill from being dismantled and restoring it as a rare landmark. Only four of the eight sails could be installed. The mill changed hands to Lincolnshire County Council and in 1986 the mill was finally restored to working order and common with "sail windmills" the sail-tips are linked together by steel rods or cables to prevent sagging in the sails, a probably unnecessary work with this kind of mill sails. Parts of the bigger timber wheels have iron teeth instead of wooden ones. Among the six floors the third one being the lower of the two bin floors provides two grain cleaners-a modern one driven by an electric motor and the other an old wind-driven separator. On the second floor, the stone and stage floor, there are the original three pairs of stones and a drive down to the first floor with a fourth pair of stones. On the ground floor a fifth pair of stones was installed which could also be driven by wind if desired or rather by engine. The mill houses a mixer on the first floor and in addition an elevator from the ground floor. Due to its large sail area supplied by its eight sails and its well-winded site the mill is able to drive four pairs of millstones - now 2 pairs of French stones and 2 pairs of so-called Peak stones and is able to work in very light breezes, when other local mills don't. An additional dresser is used to make white flour from time to time.
Now the distinctive eight-sails windmill is run by the Heckington Mill Trust and was reopened in 1986. In 2004 the mill underwent a larger restoration and in 2014 the sails were replaced.

Opening times

The mill is open to visitors:
Heckington Windmill is the last one of around 12 eight-sailed windmills in all England and four in Lincolnshire including:
These mills were partly converted into four-sailed mills, into residences, were dismantled, or still exist as ruins.
Mediterranean windmills seem to have more sails, but their sails are in fact up to six long poles forming a wheel-shaped sail-cross of 12 round sailstocks each holding one triangular sail. They do not have shutter-type or lattice-type sails as they come with Dutch-type windmills the Heckington Windmill belongs to. Beside this there are a few post mills in Northern and Eastern Europe with six short paddle-shaped sails, and in Finland there are some eight-sailed hollow-post windmills with a similar type of short sails.
Boyd's Windmill, Rhode Island, USA is another example of the larger type of windmill with eight sails.
island, Lake Onega, Russia