Eastbridge Windpump, Smock mill at The Food Museum in Stowmarket, England.
Eastbridge Windpump is an octagonal smock mill in Stowmarket standing about 30 feet (9 meters) high on a brick base, with four patent sails spanning about 44 feet (13 meters) and a boat-shaped cap. Inside, a cast-iron mechanism including the brake wheel, wallower, and three-throw plunger pump moves water through the structure.
Built by Robert Martin in the mid-1800s, the pumping station operated continuously until 1940 when it stopped working. It was carefully taken apart and reassembled at its current location in 1979 as part of the museum's collection.
The windpump represents the traditional water management methods that were essential to life in East Anglia, where drainage of farmland shaped the entire landscape. It shows how people once harnessed wind power to solve everyday agricultural problems.
You can visit during museum opening hours to see the machinery up close and examine how the gears and pumps fit together. The structure sits on the grounds where you can walk around it freely to view it from different angles.
Parts from another smock mill that had collapsed were incorporated into the frame during the 1920s and hidden beneath the wooden weatherboarding. This resourceful reuse shows how people once salvaged materials from failed structures to keep working mills standing.
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