Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1905-06-17
THE OLD W|NDM|LLS
PICTURESQUE FEATURE OF THE
LANDSCAPE DISAPPEARING.
Modern Type Common in This Coun
Try - Origin of Old Windmills
Unknown-Until Recently
Numbers in England.


In this new land Of ours we are
more or less familiar with the big
arms and tall ladders of wind
pumps, and. though we scarcely dare
acknowledge it, we have ever thought
them of certain picturesqueness. Tray
eled friends speak with superiority OF
the real thing in Holland, of the
occasional ancient landmarks re-
naming in England Of the ancient of
days in the cast.
An interesting article in Country
Life Cthe English PERIODICAL tells how
these reminders of a different order
Of things are fading from the English
landscape, and the writer speaks re-
grotlully of the disappearance. The
loss to country landscape by the grad
nal decay and disappearance Of these
landmarks is greatly TO be deplored.
II almost looks as II the winds had
ceased TO blow when places are reyis-
tied after 20 years absence and all the
fine twisting windmills have disap-
pcared. There is only one left round
London where formerly there were
dozens, especially on the Hampstead
Heights, while Cornhill in the City
only marks by name where the bish-
ops windmill stood. Formerly the
fons were full of them for pumping
purposes, while Suliouf and Norfolk,
great wheat growing counties. we're
studded with their familiar outlines on
every rounded hill. They were stimu-
lating features in the landscape, not
only because Of their size, and the
pretty jaunty little nicr-vanes with
their floats painted blue and scarlet,
that turned the tops of the big, lower
built brick mills automatically to trim
the sails TO the wind as il shifted, but
because, too, of the force and swift
motion and sense Of power inspired by
the motion of these gigantic arms.
When a high steady wind was blowing
The rush Of the great arms, the rattle
OF the louvres, the creaking of the
great pin that held ON the sails, the
roar and crush and shake of the mill
stones inside. were exciting TO the ears
of grown-ups and a source of fearful
joy to all children. There were awful
tales of bad boys and girls who tried
to touch the sails as they swept by on
their downward track, and were
whirled aloft by them; while TO climb
the houry stairs and peep into the
floury mill itself, was than the
hardest boy dare do. so sacred did the
millers (who were usually sulky fell
lows, owing TO their life apart from
the world in the mill chambersl deem
their dirty temple cf Ceres"
In England there are three types of
windmills, and no man dare say
whence came the first. Whenever they
appeared, they must have caused the
hearts of the women to rejoice, for in
prehistoric England, as is evidenced
by stone 1uerns found near ancient
dwellings, the household meal must
have been ground daily in arduous
fashion and doubtless ground by wom-
en-. In the east today we find the
meal made ready for use in the ancient
way, two women grinding at the mill.
But to return to the introduction of the
windmill to England. Some say the
Crusaders brought over the labor sav-
ing and ingenious machinery, but care
full observers rofute this by pointing
TO the fact that the Crusaders did not
get TO Palestine until the commence.
ment of the twelfth century, while
there exist English records for the
eleventh century concerning disputed
titles to windmills showing conclusive.
ly that the Crusaders did not bring.
along with the thousand and one i'm
~provemcnts' attributed TO them, the
first windmill TO England. Did the
Romans give them to the Britons, the