Windmills in Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire

Description

Pinchbeck, a large fenland parish, had an unusual number of mills – no fewer than five survived into the twentieth century.  These are corn mills and this book is a chronological history of the mills and the families living there.  From the census records and the sale adverts you find out who the millers were and, like a lot of trades, they did inter-marry quite a bit so you get one family carrying on and then you find someone from that family is an apprentice at another mill down the road.

The early ones were wooden post mills and so they didn’t last very long with wooden parts recycled from the old drainage mills that the Fens were full of.

Today there is barely anything to be seen of these important village landmarks, but this well-illustrated study discloses a rich past of mill building in the parish.  There are accounts too of the men who invested in windmills and the generations of millers who worked them.