Seeds like grain are hard on the outside, so to get at the goodness inside, we have to grind them. Thousands of years ago people crushed grain by rubbing it between rocks. A pair of stones used like this is called a quern, and they are still used today in many parts of the world. It is hard work to grind a lot of flour by hand, so getting a large animal, or nature’s forces to do the work is a good idea. About two thousand years ago, the Romans used waterwheels to drive pairs of grinding stones. About one thousand years ago, windmills were first used in Europe. Until the industrial revolution, every village had at least one wind or watermill to grind flour.

The early mills were very simple wooden machines, but over the centuries millers built bigger mills and added more machinery to clean the grain and sift the flour into different grades. Early windmill sails were like the sails of ships, with big sheets of cloth, and the whole building had to be turned to face the wind. You can still see these features on some windmills.
It was watermills that showed how the force of nature could be used to power all sorts of machinery, and started the industrial revolution. Huge waterwheels drove the machines in new factories, and led the way for making steam engines. The discoveries and drive for efficiency of the industrial revolution led to better mills, using iron gears. Two hundred years ago many old windmills were replaced with new brick tower mills where just the cap turned automatically into the wind, and the sails were made of shutters that could be opened or closed whilst turning. Most mills that remain today have all the ‘latest’ technology.

The success of the industrial revolution led to people moving from farms and villages into cities to work in factories. Cheap American wheat arriving in ports, being ground there in enormous steam-powered mills, then taken to the cities by train, led to the decline of the village wind and watermills. Two world wars led to further decline, but happily, in recent decades there has been more interest in mills, and many have been saved and restored