What to see inside Shirley Windmill

The Brake Wheel

The Dust Floor is the highest working floor, and can be looked upon as the “engine room” of the mill, where the power of the wind was converted to useable power to drive all the machinery. From high up inside the Cap, there is a good view of the machinery at this level. The sails outside the Cap turned the inclined Windshaft, which extends from the front to the back of the Cap. Made of cast iron, it holds the sails firmly at the Poll End, just outside the front of the Cap. As the sails turned, the Windshaft turned.

Fixed to the Windshaft, just inside the front of the Cap, is the Brake Wheel, also of cast iron. This is 2.8m (9ft 4in) in diameter, and against its rim is a wooden band brake around almost all its circumference, which gives the Brake Wheel its name. The brake can be operated by a long oak lever, either from inside the Cap or from the ground, to stop the mill turning. The brake wheel has 172 wooden teeth, or Cogs, to engage with and turn a horizontal wheel below it, called the Wallower, which is fixed to the top of the vertical cast iron Drive Shaft. This extends down through the floor to drive the machinery below.

The Stone Furniture

At Shirley Windmill there are two sets of Millstones. Each set comprises two stones: the Bed Stone is the lower one, which remained stationary, whilst the upper, Runner Stone, turned on top of it. One of the sets now has a recently restored and remade set of Stone Furniture, which consists mainly of a wooden box around the Millstones, called the Stonecase, with its lid, and the Feed Gear on top.

The grain was fed down from the bins on the floor above into the Hopper, and trickled out of a hole in the bottom into an inclined channel, called the Shoe, which was shaken by the multi-armed spindle known as the Damsel, so that there was a steady flow of grain to the stones, without clogging. Grain trickled steadily from the shoe into the hole in the centre (the “eye”) of the turning Runner Stone, to be ground into meal between it and the stationary Bed Stone below.

The Runner Stone is visible through the hole in the lid of the Stonecase, which is also sometimes known as a Vat or Tun. It is an “underdrift” or “underdriven” stone, meaning that it was driven from below. The grinding surfaces of the stones have a series of grooves, or Furrows, with flat areas between called Lands. The size, shape and weight of the stones can more easily be appreciated by looking at the other Runner Stone, which has been stood up against the wall, on the opposite side of the room.

The Dressing Machine

Millstones produce meal — that is, ground whole grain, including bran. Some or all of the bran, the ground-up husk of the grain, must be removed from the meal to produce a white flour. This was done by sieving the meal in the Dressing Machine, which can be seen on the Spout Floor. This is basically an inclined cylindrical wire sieve, through which the meal was fed from above. A series of rotating brushes inside brushed the flour through the very fine sieve mesh, leaving the bran behind. The flour and bran were thus separated, and could be fed down into different sacks on the ground floor below. The Dressing Machine at Shirley Windmill was, like all the other machinery, wind powered, using an auxiliary geared drive.

The Ground Floor was probably used for storage, and possibly a workshop. This contains a grain-cleaning machine, or Smutter, similar to the Dressing Machine on the floor above, and was for sieving out any dust or fine grit before the grain was taken up through the mill to be ground. Also on this floor is the millers Balance, used to weigh the sacks of flour, which all had to be accounted for very carefully. The canvas chutes from the Dressing Machine above are visible on this floor, some to take flour, some to take bran, into the waiting sacks.

There are several instructive models and displays on this floor, together with a continuously running video about windmills and their operation, so visitors who are unable to climb the stairs have plenty to interest them.

What to see outside the windmill