Traditional Cornmillers Guild videos of working windmills and watermills

The Traditional Cornmillers’ Guild, working with Taskscape Associates Ltd. and students from the University of Cumbria, have made a series of videos featuring working wind and water mills which give great insight into traditional working mills. It’s great to see and hear all the machinery going round, grain going through a hopper to the stones and flour coming down a chute which for the wind-driven equipment at Brixton we can only imagine and try to describe happening.

The videos are on the Traditional Cornmillers’ Guild website – there are 9 short videos, each featuring a different mill, and a 30 minute video featuring all the mills and footage of the ‘Crop to Crust’ conference held jointly by the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, SPAB Mills Section, the Real Bread Campaign and NFU Mutual at Stratford-upon-Avon in April 2011.

Some of the mills featured are run as commercial enterprises, some are run by volunteers, at least one is owned by a building preservation trust and one is part of a local history museum. Many have bakeries and cafés, and besides the delicious-looking bread on show there is much food for thought about how Brixton Windmill could develop and survive in the future, and problems which might be encountered.

There’s a great quote from David Eddershaw at Pakenham Watermill, Suffolk: “If they come twice then they qualify as a volunteer” – something which could apply at Brixton!