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IL 1831

Jill Windmill Clayton Sussex UK
Photographs from 'Life in a Sussex Windmill'
 
Photographs from 'Life in a Sussex Windmill'
 
Photographs from 'Life in a Sussex Windmill'
Home
The History of Clayton Windmills
Open Days and Mid-Week visits
Current and Archive Photographs
Events
Links to Windmills in Sussex and further afield
Details of Society Membership and activities
Contact Us
Site Map
 

 

Website Design : Simon Potter & Kevin CramptonEdward A. Martin F.G.S spent many happy boyhood hours walking the Downs from Brighton. His father, Henry Martin, then mayor of the town, passed on his love for Sussex and her unique hills.

The family often picnicked on Clayton Down during the 1870s when Jack and Jill were still very active in producing flour and meal commercially, their sweeps turning whenever wind permitted.

In those days the two mills stood on open Down and it was possible to meet and talk to the men and families who lived on the hills.

A typical Good Friday outing, Mr. Martin tells us, would bring them:- "from Brighton by way of Hollingbury Hill and the top of Stanmer Park to Ditchling Beacon and then westward to Clayton Downs. In those days an al fresco tea was usually taken on the wooden steps of the older mill, and thence the descent made to Clayton and Hassocks for the return train home."


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Jill in 1905

Later in life, after twenty years of living in London, he still made frequent visits to Brighton and as a passionate natural historian longed for the Downland air of his Sussex boyhood. When, in 1908, he heard that Jack was standing idle, Mr. Martin took the opportunity of renewing his acquaintance by renting the mill. He, his wife and son together with their cat used the ground floor of the tower and the adjoining roundhouse of the old Duncton mill as a holiday residence during the summers of 1908, 1909 and 1910. The first was glorious:

"From starry night to rose-coloured dawn we lived upon the Downs. We breathed the downland air, and when in the morning we awakened refreshed, we pushed open the door and stepped straight out on to the open Down."

1905

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"It was a grand sight last evening as I climbed the hill from Clayton Court Farm. When I left the station at Hassocks, it was what is known to gentlemen of the road as lighting-up time, and as I traversed the path through the fields to Clayton the moon was gaining greater and greater power. But on reaching Clayton it had set, so far as I was concerned, as I had passed into the shadow of the hills. Then as I commenced the ascent of the 300 feet between me and my mill, I watched the skyline grow brighter. The darkness of the downs was absent tonight. All around was wrapped in the snowy glow of the moon. The higher ground to the east, where it rises another 150 feet, showed clear out against the skyline, like the hump-back of a great sheep. The Mill was bathed in silver light. Where the chalk showed through the grass it shone as though incandescent, and the light was such that the lights of Brighton in the southern distance was a lost thing. It was a grand sight."

During his stay at the mills Edward Martin made a study of downland life in all its forms and meticulously recorded his findings in diaries. These later formed the basis of three books:'Dew Ponds', 'Life in a Sussex Windmill', and 'Sussex Geology And Other Essays'. His work on dew ponds led him to encounter sheep frequently drinking freely at their rims, and caused him to remark on the knowledge of a Yorkshireman: "Sheep never drink out of a pond, they take all the drink they require from the moist grass that they eat." When Edward Martin explained that he had often seen them drinking from a pond, the Yorkshireman coolly replied that the reason that he had remembered it was "because it was so exceptional."

1905

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The results of Mr. Martin's experiments showed that the dew ponds were filled with rainfall and that dew made little, if any contribution. Oxen were used to puddle the bottom of the ponds by crushing wet chalk into a thick impervious mud which then remained watertight as long as it was under water. He recalled seeing oxen ploughing in the area as late as 1908. Mr. Martin's books show considerable interest in the local Sarson stones also known as "Greyweathers". As a tribute to him a number of these stones have been acquired and placed in Jill's grounds. His works are full of nostalgic information related to this time and studies and are of particular interest in connection with Jill's new lease of life. In his book 'Life in A Sussex Windmill' (published in 1920) he made this observation in 1909:

"Will the Mills ever be set working again. It does not pay to work them, I am told. Most of the floors contain machinery, wonderful testimony to the power of the wind in this exposed position. It is all silent. Cogs are locked, but do not shift. Leather bands are slipped off their running wheels. The dust of flour covers all the cracks and crevices, and some corn in one place lies on the floor tipped there probably by the last workman, when he was called away at the last moment to work no more in the mill. The grindstones, with their hidden power, are silent. Will they speak again? The wind as a source of energy seems condemned in our country. Power can be obtained more cheaply elsewhere. Cartage up the hill runs away with the profits."

"The mill had not ceased working many months when we first took possession of it. The furnishing of the mill was no easy problem. As I expected to make a good deal of use of it, I desired to make it fairly comfortable, and a place where I could settle down to thinking and writing. But when the furniture arrived, it seemed to be lost in the vast expanse of floor to be covered. The carpet that I hoped would cover the sitting room floor occupied a ridiculously small portion. So I put it on one side of the room, and waited until I could get another to cover the other half. As it turned out, this was the better plan, for in the centre of the room there was a thick steel post which ran from the ground up to the next floor, and no one carpet could have been spread over the floor without cutting, so as to make a place for the post.

Of all the variously shaped rooms that I have ever seen, a circular one is the most awkward to arrange with furniture. There are no recesses, as are to be found in most rooms, and everything had to be placed against a wall, or else simply placed out in the open. We placed several pictures on the walls, but as the walls all sloped inwards, and the pictures of course hung vertically, they flapped about with every gust of wind. And they were not mere gusts that we had there. Nearly always the wind blew from the south-west, and when we opened the front door the wind circled round the walls as it might round the whispering gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral. But it was not a mere whisper. Sometimes we had to cling on to the tablecloth in desperation, whilst various articles enjoyed themselves as they careered round the room.

1914

Our bedroom, formerly the base of Duncton Windmill, was wainscoted round with plain wood, and when this was perfect it kept the place clean and sweet. But the woodwork was not perfect, and all sorts of zoological creatures found a home in the cracks and crevices thereof. The worst of these were the earwigs, and I soon found that they liked the cover afforded by the bedclothes. Not a night did we dare to go to bed without turning over everything on the bed in order to get rid of any and all that had during the day taken up their abode there.

The Mill is a weird place in which to spend the nights. The silence is such that it has invited mice to make it their place of residence, so at night they make havoc with our provisions. The silence has invited birds to build in the topmost storey. Occasionally a stray starling loses its way amongst the many floors, and flying from side to side, and round and round the walls, becomes completely confused. It finally reaches the ground floor, quivering with fear and terrorised with its confinement.

The silence is not complete. There are quaint noises peculiar to the Mill. In certain positions which the sweeps assume as they swing round to face the changing wind, a strange doleful yet musical note gradually rises, to die away as the wind decreases in strength. Then it rises again, and as the wind increases in strength the note moves upward one complete tone. Then back again to its first note, and then to pass away altogether.

So far as I can judge it seems to be caused by the impinging of the moving air on the steel rods which form a kind of raised star in the centre where the four great sweeps meet. The arrangement of the rods seems at a distance to resemble the raised centre of the complicated passion flower.

But the musical tone sometimes gave rise to others which were not so musical. On two or three occasions the wind has almost approached a hurricane. Then the shutters have shivered and rattled in their settings in the great sweeps, and it has seemed as though the sweeps must be wrenched out of their fastenings, but the smaller fan has answered to the wind, and has swayed the sweeps round to meet it. Nevertheless, on one occasion I deemed it advisable to move the bed and other furniture as far away as possible from the probable direction which the sweeps would take, supposing they were no longer able to stand against the force of the wind.

Our bedroom was the lower room of an earlier mill which had long since been done away with, which, however, communicated by a short passage with the stone Mill. The bedroom was covered apparently with a wooden roof, protected from the weather by sheet lead and zinc. On a piece of old plaster-wall inside there was carved in quaint figures the date 1793. According to eighteenth century maps, this was formerly known as Duncton Mill.

In consequence of the frailty of the roof of the adjacent bedroom, it was extremely probable that if one of the sweeps worked loose in a storm and fell on the roof, it would cut through, and it behoved us to act according to possibilities on stormy nights"

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