The Miller's Tale: A Man And His Machine

Memory is just another instance of the many ways in which we make stories. JENNY DISKI

After the Green Bridge the track curves round...

...to the top of Rocket Lane, which you'll recall was the start of this walk a few days (or was it half a lifetime?) ago...

If you double-clicked on the 1st pic you will have seen a black and white mill tower in the background. This was my father's windmill, and his father's before him. It was sold when my father retired, and is now a private house. There's scaffolding up for repainting the tower. When I was young, the repainting was done from a precarious wooden box winched up with a pulley and chain. I rode in it once and scared myself stiff as it swung this way and that...

I'm not sure when the sails were taken down. All I ever remember is a Ruston Hornsby diesel engine powering the machinery. (Ruston used to be the main employer in Lincoln. It's now part of Siemens - whose gas turbines are used all over the world.)

This diesel engine was my father's pride and joy. He was forever checking the dials, polishing the dark green casing, oiling the camshafts and repairing the drive belts. As a young child I entered the engine house with a mixture of fear and awe. Inside lay a noisy, chugging, wondrous machine, a masterpiece of mechanical engineering, with its rods and pistons - and huge flywheel dominating everything. It always felt rather dangerous and intimidating, especially if you were in there alone with the door shut.

Of course in the end I got to understand a little how it worked, how all the bits fitted together. I learnt how to grease it, start it up, close it down. Once a workman's hand got caught in some part of the machinery - a corn grinder I think it was - and my dad, half-way across a neighbouring field at the time, could tell from the sound and pitch of the engine that something was wrong - so in touch was he with this sleek, oily, powerful beast.

The farmers, who farmed the open fields all around, came with their grain to the mill - which my grandfather turned into flour, like an alchemist transforming base metal into gold. But the sails and grinding stones were finally removed, and in my father's day the mill produced high-grade animal feed out of ground corn and maizemeal, fishmeal, minerals and a host of other ingredients - all to a secret recipe.

This is one of the original mill stones, mounted in front of my father's house...

This is the windmill in 1907 (you can see my grandfather standing on the dray behind the 2 horses)...



... and this is it - minus cap, sails and fantail - in 1947...


To be continued...