We are fortunate in Buckinghamshire to have several wind and water mills that are open to the public,
Windmills were among the first devices to replace animal power on the farm.
A windmill may consist of a low tower supported on a central post on which it can be turned to face the wind, and a vertical contrivance that has four arms arranged on one side in the shape of an X.
Each arm has a wide sail that resists the wind. A breeze causes the arms to revolve,
Their turning energy is transferred through gears to a vertical shaft,
When a grinding mill's vertical shaft revolves, it causes a flat, circular millstone to rotate against a second flat, stationary stone. Grain placed between the stones is ground to a powder.
A postmill like this one (right) that can be seen at Pitstone was excavated at Great Linford Milton Keynes it was dated about 1220 AD.
Another common type of windmill is a tall tower with a metal frame work on the top, for the sails and turning mechanism,
With a vertical vane at the back to keep it facing into the wind.
The tower mill at New Bradwell Milton Keynes (left) was restored in 1978 by Buckinghamshire County Council but sadly not up to a working standard ,
It was built in 1805 here on high ground in the Great Ouse valley by the side of the Grand Union Canal from locally quarried limestone. It has a raised platform around the base to give stability and to allow easier access to the sails , It was in regular use until 1876 when it became uneconomical to run.
You can see the mill at Bradville near New Bradwell Sports Club access from Wheelers Lane and Nightingale Close off V6 Grafton Street.
The Postmill pictured right can be found on the common at Brill off the B4011 near Bicester in Buckinghamshire,
Ideally located on top of a hill 600 ft above sea level with a beautiful view over the Vale of Oxfordshire countryside
Constructed on a single upright post as described on the previous page the four sails are 27 ft long and 5 ft wide it was built about 1680 AD with brickwork added around 1865 AD and rebuilt in 1948,
Last used in 1919 for milling barley the mill is no longer in working condition but most of the machinery can still be seen, The mill is opened to the public on Sundays from April to September by volunteers from The Brill Society.
The mill and the surrounding area of disused clay pits are now managed by Buckinghamshire County Council
Remains of brick kilns have been found in the area area and pottery was made here from about 1200 AD many of the old houses in the village are built with bricks made from clay dug out of these pits.
The earliest known references to windmills describe the inventions of a Persian grain-mill designer in AD 644.
Windmills spread to China and also to Europe, where they were common from the 12th to the 19th century.
Farmers have used windmills mostly to grind grain and pump water.
Windmills have also been used to crush sugarcane, saw timber, press oil from seed,
Many inventors made improvements, but the introduction of steam power caused a slow decline in the use of windmills.
Finally, electricity and the petrol engine made windmills obsolete. With a growing desire in the late 20 th century to conserve energy, the windmill was revived in a few places, and new, more efficient wind turbines were being designed.
The brick kilns at Great Linford were built in the late 1800‘s by coal, lime and agricultural merchant, George Osborn Price of Newport Pagnal.
The first recorded Brick making in Great Linford was by Richard Shepherd in 1842.
The canal was used to carry the bricks by barge to New Bradwell, Wolverton, Castlethorpe and Cosgrove for building.
.The three kilns here are down draught types, heat being pulled down through the bricks to the flue in the floor of the kiln drawn by the draught from a single chimney stack that served all three kilns this system, preferred for it’s even firing temperature of up to 1600c which could be easily controlled by adjusting dampers.
Each kiln could hold 20,000 to 25,000 “green bricks” and it would take three days to bake them dry and turn them to the deep red colour we all know so well.
Because of improved ways of extracting clay and the introduction of continuously burning kilns about 1911 it became cheaper to transport bricks from Newton Longville
During the 1970s and 1980s, brick makers improved the fuel efficiency of their kilns. They achieved this with better kiln designs, reduced leakage, and added insulation.
Modern brick makers use a machine processes, Clay is forced out of the machine like toothpaste from a tube and cut by wires. Some of these machines turn out 300,000 bricks a day. The formed bricks are placed on trolleys that can carry up to 1,000 bricks.
The trolleys carry them through tunnel dryers that are heated by the exhaust from the kilns this removes about pound of moisture from each brick in 24 hours.
The next step is firing in the kiln were the chemical properties of the clay are changed to give it strength and durability temperatures within the kiln may reach 2,100o F (1,150o C).
In the continuous trolley kilns 3,000 or more bricks are piled on a single Trolley that passes with others through tunnels up to (150 meters) long.