A group of people (who open Cromer windmill in Hertfordshire to visitors) visited Lacey Green Windmill. Apparently they have an annual excursion that is organised for them by the Hertfordshire Building Preservation Trust, which owns Cromer Windmill. Cromer, in case you did not know, is to the NE of Stevenage. It is a Post Mill but I had found a number of similarities that our two mills shared to tell them about.
The two mills both date from a similar time in the 17th Century, they both fell out of use at similar times, they both had repairs done in the 1930s, and their conditions were both causing concern in the mid 1960s, which led to them both having extensive restorations done over many years. It is always useful to share experiences with like-minded people who do similar work to ourselves. The main difference with the people who visited us, is that they do not get involved with actual work on the mill itself, that is the responsibility of other people in their charity.
Having painted the sails in 2015, it was 2017 when we could paint the Smock and Cap, which had not been done since 2008. It was a longer job than before, as we had decided to put extra effort into cleaning off more of the old material than had ever been done since the weatherboarding was first painted 37 years earlier, in 1980.
It all took two weeks work, during which the weather was generally kind to us, and we used 100 litres of paint giving the smock, cap, and fanstage 2 or 3 coats. As the apex of the cap is 40 feet or 12.2 metres above the ground, we have to hire some fairly substantial access equipment in the form af a cherry-picker. Below is one photo of the work being done, otherwise I have written a seperate page on it, which can be reached by clicking on Painting 2017.
We are sorry to disappoint anybody who could not visit the windmill on 29th July. Strong winds with gusts up to 40 mph were forecast. In our exposed position on the Chiltern escarpment winds can be accelerated to higher levels. In strong winds windmills can suffer damage so, in line with our procedures, the decision not to open had to be taken for the safety of our Visitors and Volunteers.
We are sorry to disappoint anybody who could not visit the windmill at the Bank Holiday Weekend. A windmill in such an exposed position as Lacey Green (standing 750 feet above sea level on the Chiltern Escarpment) is not an advisable place to be in a thunderstorm. In line with our procedures, the decision not to open had to be taken for the safety of our Visitors and Volunteers. We monitored 10 Weather Forecasting websites over the weekend, which proved to be inconsistent and unreliable. The conditions were very extreme and in the event, at Lacey Green, there were two exceptionally heavy thunderstorms during that weekend, with lightning strikes and thunder nearby every day from 24th to 31st May.
For a long time I have been hoping to refresh this website. One reason is to make the navigation easier, so this is now done with an identical Tab Bar at the top of every page. I have kept the overall look similar to before, but I have converted it all to a more up to date system. This means that I can now easily make various changes right across the website. A particular example is that on any occasional days when the weather prevents us opening the windmill, then a prominent notice can quickly be displayed at the top of every page.
More pages have been added, with updated news from the last couple of years, and more will follow in due course, and events from past years as well, such as our Sheaf to Loaf Day in 1998. Nowadays people look at websites on all sorts of devices with all sorts of screen sizes. I have therefore made adjustments to the layout, and restricted the width of our pages (to 960 pixels) and in tests they seem to be viewable on a reasonably sized phone screen.
Any comments on the website, including telling me of any mistakes and links that do not work, will be welcomed via our Contact Page.
This page ( news-2017-2018.php ) was last updated on 4 March 2020.
The Chiltern Society is a Registered Charity No 1085163 and a Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England and Wales Registration No 4138448.