Daily archives: April 2, 2024

There was once a windmill in New Sawley.   The site is between Birchwood Ave and Hawthorne Ave, near the bends on the Twitchell. Sawley Windmill in 1835 – the miller’s cottage is by the road, further along the Twitchell, near the boundary with Long Eaton A later map showing the windmill between the railway (before Sawley Junction) and the canal bridge. It was a post mill – a relatively simple mechanism in which the whole wooden structure had to be moved around a central post to keep the sails facing the wind.  Though sometimes the structure would sit on a round brick-built base. The design had been used in England since the 12th century, though its not known when the mill in Sawley was built. Later tower windmills had a fixed structure with just a moveable top section, which meant they could be much taller, with larger sails. One of the few surviving post mills in England is the Cat and Fiddle Mill, near Dale Abbey (built in 1788). Cat and Fiddle © Copyright Garth Newton (Creative Commons Licence). The earliest newspaper reference to the Sawley windmill is 1794.  In 1799 the mill was put up for sale.  In 1801 […]