I’m on my way to the National Library of Wales. Perched on the hill overlooking the town, the Library is the iconic centre of learning and culture in Wales. As a Legal Deposit library it is one of the repositories for all the books published in the UK as well as a wealth of papers, documents, art, sound files, and much more. Accompanied by my wife, who is going there to continue her research into the pioneering freshwater ecologist Kathleen Carpenter, I am planning to find out more about Anglesey mills.

Of particular interest is a file of information about Anglesey windmills from the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW). Founded in 1928 by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (of Portmeirion fame) under the title of The Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales, its purpose is to secure the protection and enhancement of the country’s landscapes and environment. This file contains information from 1929-1938, around the time when the last of the windmills on the island stopped working and most had started to deteriorate.

On receiving the relatively slim file from the very helpful library staff, I eagerly open it, not knowing exactly what it might contain. First is a list of the windmills on Anglesey, with brief notes of the condition of some. It is undated and unattributed, but given it says Stanley Mill at Trearddur was still working (it closed in 1938), and the condition of some of the other mills, it probably dates from the early to mid-1930s. Accompanying this is a typed manuscript entitled “Article on Anglesey Windmills”, along with the published version of it from the 4 August 1930 edition of the weekly journal The Miller. The author was Rex Wailes, an engineer and historian who developed a keen interest in windmills. As the technical adviser to the Windmill Section of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) he travelled England recording details of windmills, many of which were deteriorating and in danger of being demolished. He wrote two books about English windmills and was active in trying to save them. He had visited Anglesey in 1929, resulting in this manuscript describing the general form and function of the Anglesey style of windmills (which differed from those found in most of England).

Most interesting, however, is a series of letters from January 1930 to March 1931. These were between the antiquarian J.D.K. Lloyd, the then secretary of CPRW, and representatives of various other organizations. These letters outline the early attempts to preserve the increasingly disused and threatened windmills of Wales (the majority of which are on Anglesey).

The first letter, dated 16 Jan 1930, is from Lord Boston, a major landowner on Anglesey, keen archaeologist and President of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society, with a draft resolution on preserving windmills in Wales: “That the attention of the Ancient Monuments Board for Wales [AMBW] be called to the gradual disappearance of the Windmills which are so striking a feature of the landscape in various parts of Wales. That the C.P.R.W expressed the hope that the Board may see fit to take such action as may be in its power to preserve, where possible, these interesting relics of a past phase in the organization of the agricultural and rural life of Wales.”

The resolution was passed by the CPRW board and Lloyd then sent it to AMBW for their consideration. Ralegh Radford of AMBW responded on 16 April saying that more details of the windmills and evidence of their threatened nature was required. Lloyd then decided to marshal the help of other like-minded organizations, writing to A.R. Powys of SPAB and Wilfrid Hemp of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire (RCAMWM) with the resolution and AMBW’s response.

Hemp replied a couple of days later, saying that Rex Wailes would be the best person to provide information about the mills, as he had recently visited them. However, Hemp warns that he should contact Wailes soon, as he had just married and was about to embark on his honeymoon in Spain, where he would also be hunting windmills! Hemp also notes that he had just visited Melin y Bont, the unusual mill on Anglesey powered by both wind and water, with Cyril Fox, director of the National Museum of Wales.

Three days later Fox copied Lloyd into a letter he was sending to the Office of Works, with his notes about Melin y Bont, expressing his hope that this unique windmill could be scheduled as a protected building. Around this time Lloyd also wrote to Wailes asking for assistance in providing details of the mills.

On 6 May Radford from AMBW wrote to Lloyd of CPRW asking to meet in person to discuss the windmills. Despite both organisations being involved in Welsh matters, they were actually based in Central London at this time, as was RCAMWM and SPAB. They did meet two days later and, according to a report from Lloyd to Lord Boston, Radford thought that AMBW would be willing to schedule some of the windmills. However, they wouldn’t be able to provide any money to do repairs or compensate the occupiers of working mills if scheduling their mills forced them to rely on old-fashioned methods of milling rather than upgrading machinery and techniques. They agreed that a list of the most important windmills should be drawn up to focus on for scheduling.

Later that month Lloyd received a letter from the secretary of the Windmill section of SPAB, Miss M.I. Batten, who had just published the first volume of her two-volume work English Windmills. She said that she had so far only focused on English windmills, but only knew of two ‘Welsh’ windmills, “Pontrewynydd near Monmouth (a pumping mill) and Mortimers Cross, Kingsland, Herefordshire”. In a follow-up letter two days later she admitted “I am afraid I must have been possessed of the Devil when I wrote to you on May 26th. I know perfectly well that both Monmouth and Hereford are in England, and also that Anglesey is in Wales!” She then points out that they have information on the Anglesey mills from Rex Wailes. Lloyd responded “Monmouth, of course, should – and for some purposes I believe is – connected with Wales, but it is not always politic to suggest this to the inhabitants.”

Batten also informed Lloyd that the address he had used to write to Wailes was wrong, explaining the lack of response, so he wrote again to the correct address. Wailes responded in July, sending the copy of his manuscript for The Miller that was in the folder with these letters, as well as offering his full support for the campaign to list some of the mills. However, by this time Lloyd had learned that AMBW did not hold much hope of being able to schedule any of the windmills. Lloyd and Wailes did agree that they should still press on with trying the get at least Melin y Bont scheduled somehow.

Correspondence about the windmills went quiet for several months after this, until January 1931, when the new secretary of the Windmills section of SPAB, Miss A.M.B. Lloyd, wrote to J.D.K. Lloyd of CPRW, saying she had heard that CPRW might be able to fund repairing one of the Anglesey windmills. He had to advise her that in fact CPRW was unable, both by constitution and funding, of providing any money. Further correspondence between Lloyd, Hemp and Wailes cast doubt that anything can be done about preserving the mills.

However, Wailes throws a cat amongst the pigeons by saying that Hemp had told him there was a possibility that the machinery at Melin y Bont could be “dismantled, and parts taken to the Cardiff Museum”. This provoked a flurry of letters and phone calls to assess the situation and decide how to act. Lloyd forwarded Wailes’ letter to Fox at the National Museum of Wales, asking if he could provide any more information.

Fox seems to have been very particular about the name of his museum, as he responds back – “Who is Mr. Rex Wailes? Will you kindly inform him that the museum to which he refers is the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and not the Cardiff Museum!!” He goes on to say that it was the first he had heard of the matter, that he would be pleased to receive parts of the mill into their collection but would rather that it wasn’t dismantled. Lloyd writes back to Wailes about Fox’s response (diplomatically leaving out Fox’s response about the name, but prominently giving the full, correct name of the museum). Wailes responds saying that SPAB have no funding to save Melin y Bont, but could help publicise the issue.

After this the correspondence ends. The machinery in Melin y Bont wasn’t dismantled and sent to Cardiff after all. It continued grinding grain, powered solely by the water wheel, until around 1941, and was sadly burnt out by a fire in 1973, leaving the machinery in a heap at the bottom of the tower.

Efforts to schedule and protect the Anglesey windmills gathered pace again in the early 1950s. A list of windmills and watermills on Anglesey produced by SPAB at this time has most of the windmills described as “almost in ruins”, “very poor state of repair”, “half demolished”, etc. Even Melin Llynon, which is now proudly restored and fully working again, was described as “in a poor state of repair its windows and doors being almost non-existent”. However, from 1952 and through the next two decades, most of the surviving windmills were listed. Ironically, Melin y Bont was overlooked during this period of listings, but it was finally protected in 1998. As can be seen in my gallery of Anglesey windmills, many of the windmills of Anglesey have now been converted to dwellings or the empty towers stabilised. It took a while, but the wonderful windmills of Anglesey were finally saved.

The post Saving Anglesey’s Windmills appeared first on Anglesey History.

My Anglesey History web site had its beginnings in 1995 as a single page on my main business site for Kovach Computing Services. Five years later I hived it off to a separate web site, Anglesey-History.co.uk, and started expanding it with various new major sections. In 2008 I added a completely new section on the Windmills of Anglesey.

The inspiration for the section was the excellent book Windmills of Anglesey by Barry Guise and George Lees. It was published in 1992 and the first print run sold out quickly. It was highly sought after, not least by me (I made the mistake of not buying it as soon as I saw it!), and prices of second-hand copies on eBay were reaching £100. In 2010 a revised edition was published, which is still in print and available on Amazon and other outlets, such as the Oriel Môn shop.

Over the Christmas 2020 holiday I began revising the windmill section of the web site. This was mainly because many of the links to other websites that I had added in 2008 were no longer functional. The sites had either disappeared or had moved the pages to new addresses. I also started revisiting the actual descriptions of each windmill.

In developing the windmills section of the website I relied heavily on the research that Guise and Lees had published, as well as information from my own research and other sites, such as the millsarchive.org. But in the years since, many new sources of historical information have become more easily accessible over the internet. These include the Wales censuses from 1841-1911 (on Ancestry.co.uk or FamilySearch.org), the Anglesey parish records (again on Ancestry.co.uk or FamilySearch.org), the 1840 Tithe Maps and many archives of scanned and indexed newspapers from around the country (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and the National Library of Wales). The scrollable version of the early Ordnance Survey maps at the National Library of Scotland is also very useful. I started delving deeper into the history of a couple of the mills and discovered there was much more that I could add, to expand on what Guise and Lees had published, to clarify some points that were uncertain, and to correct some mistakes.

The censuses are particularly useful. These give the names, ages, birthplaces and occupations of every person living on the island. In a land where just a few surnames and given names predominate, these are vital for determining which William Jones, for instance, is being mentioned in other records. The birthplaces of children can also be useful for tracking the career of a miller who may have moved around to work at different places. Milling often ran in families, with sons and brothers found working at various mills around the island. I’ve started building family trees of the millers and their families I’ve encountered in the censuses so far, using genealogical software, to help in making connections between the people found working around the island.

As an example of how these approaches can work, lets look at Mona Mill. Also known as Melin y Borth, it overlooks Amlwch harbour and is the tallest on Anglesey, as well as the only brick-built one. Guise and Lees point out that it was built and owned by the Paynter family, and was run by various members of the Jones family through the decade, first Owen Jones, then Robert Jones, and then William Jones, who they say was probably Robert’s son. However, investigating the censuses for Amlwch has shown that, not only was William not Robert’s son, but there were actually three different unrelated William Jones that ran the mill through the years. The second William, who was running it in 1871, had previously been working at mills in Llechylched and Llandrygarn, and later went to run Melin Adda on the other side of Amlwch.

As this blog is published I have only revised the histories of just a few of the mills (the three mills near Amlwch, Melin Adda, Melin y Borth and Melin y Pant, two in Llandrygarn, Melin Manaw and Melin Newydd and Melin Orsedd in Rhoscefnhir) . But the process is ongoing and I hope to have all the pages updated in the near future.

Warren Kovach is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

The post Revisiting the Windmills of Anglesey appeared first on Anglesey History.