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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Wiltshire => Topic started by: toby webb on Sunday 19 March 23 18:16 GMT (UK)
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I am wondering if there is anyone who has an idea about the number of watermills compared to windmills in say the 18th Century. The north part of Wiltshire is currently of greater interest to me.
Thanks for any help. Toby.
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I presume you have Googled and seen this site?
https://www.windmillworld.com/uk/wiltshire.htm
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Try https://www.facebook.com/Wiltsindarch/
https://www.wiltshiremuseum.org.uk/industrial-archaeology/
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One of the best archives on the subject is the Mills Archive: https://new.millsarchive.org/
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Thanks to you all for I now have a good start. T.
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I had a look at "18th Century Collections" to check how many times "Watermill/Watermills", "Water-mill/Water-mills", "Windmill/Windmills" and "Wind-mill/Wind-mills" occurred in their wide range ofpublications. Came up with 11,135 references to wind driven mills and 7,539 references to water driven mills.
Repeated the search against 18th Century newspapers which threw up 7,580 references to wind driven mills and 2,395 references to water driven mills.
Wholly "finger in the air" (faute de mieux on my part) but, at least, consistent in identifying wind driven as the majority!!
Noticed that the Domesday Book recorded about 6,000 mills which were mainly water driven with some animal powered. Think the article mentioned "pre-windmill"? It also gave a county by county breakdown.
Best of luck with the search
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Thank you so much hanes teulu. Now it's a question of which are the windy counties and which have the better water resources. T