Heage Windmill Sails Away

As a Trustee of Heage Windmill – and the guy who runs the website – I get to take a few photos, which is always a pleasure as the windmill is such a beautiful sight.

Not at the moment, though… due to a severe case of wet rot in the main timbers, the sails had to be taken down and sent for repair.

I tell you: a de-nuded six sail windmill is not pretty to look at.

However, thanks to the volunteers who launched the Trouble at Mill Appeal (TAMA) – and, of course, those who have donated to TAMA – there is light (and wind) at the end of the tunnel and it looks as if the sails will be turning again when we come to open  on Saturday, March 26th.

Here’s a set of photos when I visited the factory site where we’ve been allowed to carry out some of the essential work.

The volunteer team have disassembled the shutters on the old sails, cut out the dead wood on the whips, and painted all of the sails and shutters.  It’s a long painting job as each of the six sails needs three coats.  At the time I took these photos, 15 had been painted.

The job then is to reassemble the shutters on the old sails and, as each of the shutters have been sponsored – with each sponsor allocated a number – those numbers need to be re-stencilled.