Monument record LXD 036 - Windmill

Goram's Mill. Four-storey smock(?) mill, built in 1842 by John Whitmore. It worked until 1910 by wind but continued with a steam engine into the 1930's. The single storey stump remains, uased as a store. There were four paten sails, an ogee cap with gallery and fantail, and two pairs of stones (S1). It was demolished after 1939 (S2). Recorded on the 1st edition OS map as a tower windmill (S3).

Goram’s Windmill is an 8-sided smock mill, a style characterised by its sloping tower that resembles the smocks worn by agricultural workers of the time. It was built by Whitmore and Binyon, a prolific millwrighting and engineering company who constructed mills throughout Suffolk and East Anglia. The only working example of a Whitmore and Binyin windmill to remain is Buttrum’s Windmill in Woodbridge. On top of the smock tower was the mill’s ogee-shaped cap. This held four double-sided patent shuttered sails spanning around 50ft, which were fixed on to a cast iron windshaft. The windshaft had a cast iron brake wheel which took the drive from the sails to a main vertical shaft that powered machinery in the mill below. The cap revolved on top of the smock to turn the sails into the wind by means of the six-bladed fantail at its rear. At the rear of the cap, there was a guide pole, which supported the striking chain to operate the shutters in the sails. The guide pole held the chain away from the smock tower to prevent it catching as the cap turned. Records suggest the mill operated three pairs of millstones which were over driven by a spur wheel above them. The mill would likely have housed some auxiliary machinery, such as a ‘bolter’ or ‘wire machine’ for refining wholemeal flour into white flour. The mill was originally clad in timber weatherboarding, which would have been painted with white lead paint. During the mill’s working life, it was clad in metal sheets to stave off water ingress. It is the addition of this cladding that has allowed so much of the original timber framing and plaster work to survive to this day. The sails, windshaft and fanstage were removed by 1935, at which point the mill continued operation by engine. This drove the mill’s machinery via a belt driven pulley located halfway up the outside of the smock. Around the time of the Second World War, the mill was truncated, with the cap and upper floors of the mill being removed to leave the brick base and ground floor of the mill’s smock. A conical sheet-metal roof was added over the ground floor, allowing the mill to continue life as a store. Goram’s mill was once among over 90 smock mills that stood in Suffolk, though it is now one of only nine remaining smock mill sites in the county (S4).