After scanning the photos of windmills in Norfolk yesterday, I thought we'd have a bit of a windmill tour today.
In the photograph is one of the Fylde's most famous windmills, Lytham's mill next to the old lifeboat house on the fabulous green sward that so characterises Lytham's coastline.
It was a clear day too, Lytham is at the mouth of the River Ribble which has its source in the Yorkshire Dales, passing Selside and Settle before crossing the border into Lancashire. It then passes through the witchlands of Pendle and past the castle at Clitheroe. It remembers the Roman bath house and cavalry fort at Ribchester and maybe knows the true story of the Grey Lady of Salmesbury Hall, before remembering great docks at Preston.
I stood for a while admiring the large rusting anchor in front of the lifeboat house with the rooftops of Southport clearly visible on the far side of the river. Back in the car, we motored through Warton. Now more known for its British Aerospace test flights, it had at one time an early windmill. It was a post mill - a structure built purely of wood, a design in use long before the brick-built tower mills that still exist in the Fylde. This mill had been brought over the Ribble as it used to stand at Tarleton.
When I visited the site in the early 1980s all that remained was the central post and a couple of mill stones to tell what it was. Now there has been some more development and the spot where it stood has been tarmacked over to form a car park. The only clue to the one-time existence of the windmill is the name of the road - Mill Lane.
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