St Margaret's Bay Windmill
Encyclopedia
St Margarets Bay Windmill is a Grade II listed Smock mill on South Foreland
South Foreland
South Foreland is a chalk headland on the Kent coast of southeast England. It presents a bold cliff to the sea, and commands views over the Strait of Dover. It is northeast of Dover and 15 miles south of North Foreland...

, the southeasternmost point of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It was built in 1929 to generate electricity for the attached house, high on the White Cliffs of Dover
White cliffs of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form part of the British coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliffs are part of the North Downs formation. The cliff face, which reaches up to , owes its striking façade to its composition of chalk accentuated by streaks of black flint...

.

History

The mill was built for Sir William Bearswell by Holman's, the Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

 millwright
Millwright
A millwright is a craftsman or tradesman engaged with the construction and maintenance of machinery.Early millwrights were specialist carpenters who erected machines used in agriculture, food processing and processing lumber and paper...

s. It was built to generate electricity and started generating in June 1929. The mill ceased to generate electricity in 1939, when the dynamo
Dynamo
- Engineering :* Dynamo, a magnetic device originally used as an electric generator* Dynamo theory, a theory relating to magnetic fields of celestial bodies* Solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the Sun's magnetic field- Software :...

 was removed. During the Second World War, the mill was occupied by a special branch of the WRNS
Women's Royal Naval Service
The Women's Royal Naval Service was the women's branch of the Royal Navy.Members included cooks, clerks, wireless telegraphists, radar plotters, weapons analysts, range assessors, electricians and air mechanics...

. Repairs were done to the mill in 1969 by millwrights Vincent Pargeter and Philip Lennard. These included a new fantail
Windmill fantail
A Fantail is a small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill, and which turns the cap automatically to bring it into the wind. The fantail was patented in 1745 by Edmund Lee, a blacksmith working at Brockmill Forge near Wigan, England, and perfected on mills...

 and repairs to the sails.

Description

St Margarets Bay windmill is a three storey smock mill on a single storey brick base. It has four patent sails
Windmill sail
Windmills are powered by their sails. Sails are found in different designs, from primitive common sails to the advanced patent sails.-Jib sails:...

and is winded by a fantail. The mill generated electricity via a dynamo and is now used as residential accommodation, a use it has always had.

External links

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