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Introduction
Early Days
Mr Waud's New Mill
Journey through the working mill
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Introduction
Location: York
Welcome to the story of the Holgate Windmil, an early Lincolnshire style tower mill built in 1770 by George Waud and run by him, his son and grandson among others for 163 years.Through prosperous times, wars, hurricanes, freezing temperatures and financial hardship it worked, until 1933 when it ceased to be a viable business.
The mill is situated on the highest point of York, silhouetted against the sky-line in the Old Township of Holdgate (road through the hollow) having the astonishing York Minster as its backdrop.
Holgate Windmill must have been a wonder to all who came across it, standing nearly 60 feet tall and weighing approximately 200 tons on a commanding eminence, it superseded all that went before it and indeed probably assisted in the demise of the Acomb Mill. It was the best that the technology of the day could provide and it kept up to date with all the new-fangled ideas until it ceased to function in 1933.
The purpose of the mill was to provide the local community with whole-meal flour for bread and feed the cattle. A service carried out without much fuss throughout its working life. Such was the ingenuity of the trial and error engineers/millwrights, the mill was almost fully automatic even in its early days, allowing the miller to set his hand to other things often leaving the mill in order to work the land returning from time to time to bag the flour, fill the bins with grain and check that all was well.
Imagine if you can, listening to the rhyhmic rumble of apple wood teeth on to iron gears, to the sails shush by the windows, to the stones singing. Feeling the mill harassed by storms or seeing a glorious sunrise surprise the sails, smell the warm freshly ground flour and touch of ancient wood in your hand. Windmills, like the old sailing ships are the living archives of English spirit and endeavour.
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