History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

200 HISTORY OF CORN MILLING: vol. iv.
IV.
January 6-7, 1839, causing an unprecedented series of wrecks
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In the great gale of
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Their
Immediate
Successors.
;_ lives. Mr. Lunt, referring to this storm, says :
28. Appendix : '39' Jerry's rnill, on the edge of the river, could not be held in.
„, . It was usually reckoned indeed to be the best blown mill at the
north end of Liverpool. During the storm Jerry was on duty all
night, and every sack of wheat had been shot on to prevent her
taking fire. But it was all to little purpose, and she tore away in
spite of every effort to check her. There was a place in aU windmills
to which a brake could be applied on emergency, and at last
Jerry put this brake on, and to steady it sat on the end of it. This
was a long beam of stout wood. He managed to keep the mill in
check during the night in this way but the strain ; and shaking he
received were very severe and he never shook off their effects and not
;
long afterwards they proved fatal. I very well remember Jerry, as
he was always called, from my earliest days. My father acted as his
executor. The late Thomas Bolland was his foreman and married his
daughter, carrying on the mill for some years after Jerry's death."
The last tenant was the late Frederick Dresser (of Edmund Street
Rice Mills), who worked it for grinding rice husks from 1872 to 1880,
the wind power being abolished in favour of steam. It was burnt
down, December 12, 1880 : this being not altogether an unfeared
catastrophe for some years — as Mr. Dresser stated, "it was a
dangerous risk, and I paid three guineas per cent, premium." The
lower part of the tower, now deeply embedded among warehouses
and docks, in Regent Street, opposite the Bramley Moore Dock, is
used as a cement warehouse ; adjoining it are left two or three of
the antique little cottages that in former times were occupied by
the millers.
"The Wishing-gate Mill." This is shown in Perry's map, 1768.
It stood in a sand-land adjoining the shore, about five hundred yards
nearer to Liverpool than Townsend Mill, and overlooked the popular
Wishing-gate, whence it derived its name. Hither a century ago,
and later, were wont to repair friends and relatives of seamen on
board outward-bound vessels passing seaward close inshore. In
those days of small ships, long voyages, and months of silence at
home, many a sad scene of farewell was witnessed at this old mill on
the sands. Its site, measured from the old church, by reference to
various maps, seems to have been at the north-west corner of the
present Stanley Dock.
" The Coffee-house Mill." Still about four hundred yards nearer
Liverpool was a mill standing in a shore field belonging to Lord
Derby, and shown in the maps of 1785 and 1803. Reference to the
town books for February 17, 1809, shows that the mill had been
purchased by the corporation in 1802 from Thomas Plumbe, and
that in it 1809 was burnt down. On May 12 in that year Edward
Lyon, lessee under the late Thomas Plumbe, was ordered to
surrender the lease and make good the damage. In j8io Robert
Greenham was the occupier, and in 181 1 he was called upon "to pay
;^i5o damages due to the fire." It obtained its designation from an
adjoining coffee-house. Having been restored, it was worked till