Newsletter November 2014 Part 2

Work was started in Lanyon on two mill sites, one being a stamps and the other a corn mill. Interestingly there is documentation putting the stamps in the 17th century but as yet I have found no mention of the corn mill, though it is believed to have originated from an even older period. What is interesting is the mention of two stamping mills on the documents, could our present corn mill have started life as a stamps? The corn mill was closed down for the last time in 1940 when the miller, Robert Penberthy, was caught in the cogs of the inside workings and crushed to death, something that would have been horrifyingly slow. The wheel was cut up, possibly during the war, but several sections were left in the bottom of the wheel pit. Over the last few months work has been on-going with ropes, cables and winches to extract these sections, and there have been many stories from this work that have raised a few giggles among the group. In one day I had knots slip that never normally slip, then a brand new winch refused to do its stuff, then the rope snapped...several times and then on arrival home I managed to trip over the piece of wheel I’d already retrieved and painted, so head-butting the truck! No sense, no feeling! BUT two of the sections are now receiving TLC from us and we are learning from them. The layout has been surveyed and we have spoken to individuals that remember the mill just before it closed. All the leats and pools are being mapped and film footage made, so Lanyon shall be a working project for some time yet.

As you can see in the various pages we are growing and expanding in our activities all the time with walks being planned to some of the places so that you can get hands on with our projects and our findings. Our first is to the Madron Operational Base and if this is successful then we shall look into other walks around Boskednan and Trevaylor woods. At the present time we are not charging for the walks but would appreciate donations to help with our research costs, remembering we are totally self sufficient. We are now looking into films being shown at our displays and maybe as special evenings, we just need to sort the technology side out which involves the rigging of the laptop to the TV on a loop system, then one of us shall have to learn the system well enough to operate it without mishaps! Old English we can do but I’m afraid cables, digits and thingummies we are not so sure of! That’s why we have the webmaster!
On that last note we shall end and we hope to see you at our walk on the 15th November.

Stuart Emmett