The Mortimer Windmill

Yes it really was in Windmill Road!

James Morgan was vicar of Mortimer from 1768 – 1811. He came from a well-off family who lived at Oakfield. In 1800 he arranged for the lease of an acre or so of land from Richard Benyon de Beauvoir on which a windmill could be built.

In 1804 most of the common land in Mortimer was enclosed and the land divided up and shared amongst the local farmers. On the Enclosure map of 1801-3 The windmill is clearly drawn and named. The windmill is in the area No 41, just below the “R” of R Benyon Esq.

Windmill road can be seen and is described as a private road leading to the windmill. As a consequence of returning the common land to Mr Benyon’s private use, most of the area was planted with fir trees.

This map can be seen in the Berkshire Record Office or on line at http://ww2.berkshirenclosure.org.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DER%2FP%2F3%2FB

Apart from this there are two printed references to the windmill.

In 1811 there is:

An Account of the Operations Carried Out for Accomplishing a Trigonometrical Survey...

This covers the years 1800 to 1809, and shows that Mortimer Windmill was used as a triangulation point.

Extract from the first Ordnance Survey Map, around 1810. The windmill is marked, and drawn more or less in the middle of this extract

By the time the Tithe map was drawn around 1839/40 there is no mill shown on the map.

The second mention is in

The journey-book of England. Berkshire (Derbyshire, Hampshire, Kent). (1840) where is stated:

“There are entrenchments visible between Aldermaston Heath and Stratfield Mortimer windmill “ (the entrenchments are also shown on the Ordnance Survey map).

All went well for the miller for some years. Mr Hall, the original miller, died, his wife put in a manager – Mr Ridley, who subsequently bought the mill. In 1832 there is a letter written to Mr Benyon by Mr Ridley in which he asks to buy the freehold of the land, or if not to be able to remove the mill. Possibly he does remove the mill as around the coronation of Victoria the mill has gone.

Extract from “A History of Mortimer” written by Miss Helen Johnson for a Women's Institute competition. April, 1927

An old windmill stood on a slight hill where Windmill Road now runs. It was pulled down shortly after Queen Victoria's coronation. During the Great War much of our glorious pinewoods fell beneath the axe of the Canadian lumbermen whose camp and sawmill were at the Ufton turning. The concrete bed of the saw, a huge block, is still there. (It is still there in 1996 – June Woodward, and in 2024.)

Windmill Cottage was built about 1800 as the miller's house and converted to cottages by Benyon after the mill was taken down in 1837. It is was later reconverted back into a single dwelling.

The Mortimer Windmill

written by Colin Woodward (a founder member of the Mortimer Local History Group) in1980

As the 18th century drew to its close, Mortimer Common was still mostly unenclosed waste land, covered in gorse and heather and used for rough grazing. Near the Eastern edge of the heathland, where Windmill Cottage now stands in Windmill Road, Mr. Richard Benyon de Beauvoir, the Lord of the Manor, leased an acre or so of the Common to the Vicar of Mortimer, the Rev. James Morgan, who arranged for a windmill and a cottage to be built.

The Rev. Morgan was a well-to-do gentleman of independent means who had inherited Oakfield House in Wokefield from his mother's family. Just why he should concern himself with windmills we do not know. It may have been just a business venture, but he probably felt he was doing the people of Mortimer a good turn by providing them with their own mill again. Their corn could once more be ground within the parish without having to make the slow winter journeys through boggy lanes to the water mills at Stanford End, Swallowfield, Sulhamstead or Aldermaston.

Mortimer had once had water mills of its own - one is mentioned in the Domesday Book - but all had disappeared by the Rev. Morgan's time, leaving only a legacy of ponds and dams and the diverted Foudry Brook to puzzle local historians.

We may be certain that the Vicar took no part himself in either the construction or operation of the windmill; indeed he seems to have had no further connection with it, and by 1813 it had passed into the hands of Thomas Hall. When Hall died his widow engaged as manager a Mr. Samuel Ridley, and by 1832 Mrs. Hall was also dead and Ridley had purchased the mill.

Great changes had meanwhile taken place on Mortimer Common. In 1804 the waste land had been enclosed and allotted to various landowners of the parish. About half had been returned to the Lord of the Manor and as it was no longer common grazing land he was free to do what he liked with it, and had planted large stretches with conifers.

Among the Benyon Estate Papers deposited in the Berkshire Record Office there is a letter dated 25th September 1832 written by Samuel Ridley. We have the kind permission of the Record Office to quote from it.

It starts very formally: “Samuel Ridley give his compliments and pray to know of Mr. Benyon de Beauvoir Esquire - what is agreeable to your pleasure to do respecting this Piece or Parcel of Waste Ground...” He then draws attention to a clause in the original lease whereby any building erected on the land could later be pulled down and the materials taken away, but that if it was still there when the lease expired Mr. Benyon as ground landlord could exercise an option to purchase the building at an agreed valuation. Passing over a lot of complicated prose regarding alternative methods of valuation we come to the heart of the matter: “Now this lease Terminate in the Year of our Lord one Thousand eight Hundred and thirty three”.

From this point the letter changes key. It becomes a very personal statement and is best left to speak for itself. “The said Samuel Ridley put the Mill in good repair - Which have cost me three Hundred and five Pounds - Now it is a Grievance to hear my enemys talk - that I the said Samuel Ridley shall lose all my Property - and they say I shall have it taken from me - Which would be hard indeed after I the said Samuel Ridley have laboured and lived prudently for two and twenty Years and have saved the Money out of my Wages by Working Journeyman in the Miller's business from my Infancy - And now to lose property would be Death and ruin to me - Now the said Samuel Ridley is resolve to make his appeal to the Generosity of Mr. Benyon De Beauvoir Esquire hope to merit your favour and consideration to grant me leave to purchase the Land right and title to the whole “That is to say to make the land freehold.”

It was worth a try, but Ridley seems to realise he has very little chance of getting title to the land, and even if he does so he is still in trouble. “And if Mr. Benyon De Beauvoir Esquire should not be incline to make it freehold the said Samuel Ridley entreat to know if it will be agreeable to the pleasure of Mr. Benyon De Beauvoir Esquire to grant the said Samuel Ridley leave to take the materials of the Windmill off the Ground -as it lays under the necessity to Remove because the fir plantations has overgrown and keep a wind off the Mill”.

Ridley did not get his freehold, and by 1837 the mill was gone. Sadly, we have found no picture of Mortimer Windmill. Someone must surely have drawn or painted it in its heyday so we live in hope. If Ridley intended to re-erect it elsewhere it was probably a small wooden post mill, easily dismantled and transported, and leaving little trace behind. However, the miller's house does exist in Windmill Road, called, appropriately, Windmill Cottage. Following the end of the windmill it was for a time divided into three tenements but has subsequently been converted back into one dwelling.

Samuel Ridley The Miller at Mortimer Windmill

Was this the fate of our miller?

Reading Mercury - Saturday 24 October 1846:

Samuel Ridley, 52, was indicted for having, at Waltham St. Lawrence, stolen eight sacks, the property of Mr. John Sharp.—The prisoner was in the service of Mr. E. Smith, miller, at Waltham, until November 1843, when the mill was burnt down ; the prosecutor had been in the habit of sending sacks to the mill, and some of them were missing after the fire, and supposing they were destroyed with the mill, no notice was taken of the matter: however, recently, his master having occasion to go to his house, discovered a quantity of sacks, amounting in the whole to 21, of which number eight were identified by Mr. Sharp. The prisoner was found guilty, and sentenced to three months' hard labour.

Unfortunately the trail dries up here – we were unable to find any other records that definitely refer to this Samuel Ridley.

The WW2 Pillbox