User:Mjroots/Millwright

Traditionally, a millwright was a person who built and maintained windmills, watermills, horse mills, animal engines and steam mills. He was highly skilled craftsman.

Origin
Mills were known in antiquity. The earliest methods of grinding were Saddle stones, the pestle and mortar and querns. They were superseded by mills powered by slaves or cattle. The earliest record of a watermill dates to the late 1st century BC. In the British Isles, the Norse mill is thought to have been introduced in the 5th Century. Charters dating from the 7th century onwards mention mills. Puiset's Boldon Buke of 1183 does not list any windmills, only watermills and horse mills. The first windmills in England appeared at about that time, with examples being recorded at Cleydone, Buckinghamshire between 1154 and 1189, Weedley, Yorkshire in 1185, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk in 1191, and Henham, Essex in 1202.

As well as construction, mills needed to be maintained, being exposed to the elements. The trade of millwright dates back to the 7th Century. Although mills are usually associated with grinding grain or pumping water, before the invention of the steam engine many other tasks were performed by them. Examples include working a man engine in a mine, working bellows or a tilt hammer at a blast furnace, fulling, powering looms, papermaking, and the production of oil from plants.

Under the feudal system, the lord of the manor was responsible for ensuring a mill was in working order, otherwise tenants could not be compelled to have their grain ground at his mill. free tenants were at liberty to have their grain ground where they wanted. After the Norman Conquest, the majority of mills were under the control of abbeys and monasteries.

Improvements
Millwrights were responsible for many improvements through the century.

Watermills
Early watermills had very little gearing. The Norse mill drove a single pair of millstones directly.. In Medieval mills with a horizontal axis waterwheel, the waterheel drove a single pair of millstone through a pit wheel and lantern pinion. If a mill was to work another pair of millstones, another waterwheel had to be provided, as formerly seen at Bridlake Mill, Bridestowe, Devon and still to be seen at Eskdale Mill, Boot, Cumbria.

Windmills
The early sunk post mills with their trestles partly buried in the ground, were developed into the post mill, which reached their pinnacle in Suffolk in the 19th Century. As post mills were built larger, the need to bury the trestle for stability diminshed due to the extra mass of the larger mill. The addition of a roundhouse provided storage space and protected the trestle from the elements. An early example of a post mill with a roundhouse was at Great Dunmow, Essex in 1734. Some Suffolk mills had three-storey roundhouses, as seen at Saxmundham and Weybread.

The invention of the smock mill and tower mill also enabled larger mills to be built. The smock mill reached its pinnacle in Kent in the 19th century. The tower mill reached its pinnacle in South Holland, Netherlands in the 18th century.

Pierre-Théophile Berton
Pierre-Théophile Berton patented the Berton Sail in 1841. This type of sail had eight shutters which ran the length of the sail. They could be adjusted without the need to stop the mill.

William Cubitt
William Cubitt invented the Patent Sail in 1807. This type of sail also allowed for full adjustment without stopping the mill. It combined features of Hooper's Roller Reefing Sail with those of Meikle's Spring Sail.

Stephen Hooper
Stephen Hooper patented the Roller Reefing Sail in 1779. This type of sail allowed for full adjustment of the sail without having to stop the mill. Hooper also built a numer of vertical axis windmills, such as Fowler's Mill, Battersea, Surrey, and at Margate and Sheerness, Kent.

Edmund Lee
Edmund Lee patented the fantail in 1745. The fantail enabled a windmill to be turned to face the wind automatically. Early windmills were turned into wind manually.

Andrew Meikle
Andrew Meikle invented the Spring Sail in 1772. This type of sail allowed a mill to cope with increasing wind speed without the need to stop the mill to adjust the sails.

John Rennie
John Rennie was a pupil of Andrew Meikle. He invented the sliding hatch, an improvement to the penstock which allowed better use of water to power a waterwheel. The Claverton Pumping Station, Somerset was built by Rennie.

John Smeaton
John Smeaton researched the efficiency of waterwheels and windmill sails, enabling them to be more efficient in operation.