Windmill Road
Windmill Road
Sprowston mill was built about 1730. It was destroyed by fire on 23rd March 1933, the day before it was due to be handed over to the Norfolk Archaeological Trust. A working model of it had been made by Mr H. O. Clarke, of Norwich, and this may be seen at the Science museum, South Kensington. For many years this mill at Sprowston had been known as Crome’s mill, from a painting by that artist entitled “A Windmill on Mousehold Heath near Norwich”. In a paper in Norfolk Archaeology in 1966 this identification was disputed by Dr M. Rajnai, who listed various titles over which Crome’s painting had appeared since 1844; he particularly referred to an old label on the back of the frame, to which attention had recently been drawn, which said “Trowse Mill/near Norwich by/Old Crome”. Dr Rajnai also compared the painting with a pencil drawing of apparently the same subject by George Vincent, in which the hill crowned by a post mill, the winding path, the sandpit and signpost are all found in the same relationships to each other as in Crome’s painting. He concluded that the similarities were so striking that there could be no reasonable doubt that the scene was identical in both works. To clinch the matter, although the signpost in Crome’s painting appeared to bear no inscription, Vincent’s drawing shows it marked “To Crown Point”. Reference to Faden’s Topographical Map of Norfolk dated 1797 confirmed that there was indeed a windmill close to Crown Point at Trowse at that time. That there should have been some confusion over the true location of Crome’s mill is perhaps not to be wondered at, for old maps and “prospects” show the city to have been dotted around by both tower and post mills. These included at least two wood sawmills worked by wind, of which one stood near another mill at the top of Gas Hill. While only one is shown in this position on Corbridge’s Map of Norfolk, published in 1750, two are shown on Faden’s map in 1797, and both survived to be marked on the Ordnance Survey’s large-scale town plans surveyed in the 1880s. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2001 |
Beyond Pockthorpe we come to Sprowston,
where the name Windmill Road still indicates the site of Harrison’s
post mill, an example of the earliest kind of
windmill known in England; there is an illustration of
one on the memorial brass to Adam de Walsokne, who died
in 1349, and his wife Margaret in St Margaret’s
Church, King’s Lynn. In this type the box-like body
revolves around the centre post so that the sails always
face the wind. The supporting structure was often
enclosed by a brick roundhouse for storing the grain, as
it was here.