Cambridgeshire was famous for its windmills, and Wicken Corn Windmill is one of the notable survivors. It was built in 1813, and its millers used it to grind wheat into bread-making flour for use by the villagers, and to grind feed for the local farmers' animals. The How family owned the windmill for many years from 1838 onwards. After the 1914-18 War smaller milling businesses generally became less economic in England and milling by wind at Wickham ceased in he 1930s.Wicken Corn Mill is a fine, large windmill with many characteristic Cambridgeshire features. The tarred tower carries the white domed cap with its vertically boarded roof. The cap carries the four large sails of 63 feet (19.2m) overall span and 9 feet (2.74m) width. The sails open to spill the wind and control the power according to Cubitt's patent of 1807. The cap and sails are turned to face the wind automatically by the blue fantail, a small wind rotor set above the rear of the cap. The mill is called a 'smock' windmill, the English term for a wooden towered mill, from the fancied similarity to an old countryman in his smock frock. Inside, the mill drove three pairs of millstones, the two larger pairs being of 4 feet 6 inches (1.37m) diameter.
After the milling operation stopped the mill became more derelict. The sails were dismantled, and later, the roof failed progressively in the 1950's and 60's. By 1971 Wicken Windmill was in a very poor state of repair. Fortunately at this stage Mr G.C. Wilson of Over Windmill fitted a temporary domed roof to Wicken Mill with the cooperation of the then owners, Mr and Mrs Johnson. This slowed the decay of the mill.
In 1987 the Wicken Windmill Preservation Group, of amateur millwrights and supporters, bought the mill to repair it to working order. This was to be a spare time project, with all repair work being done by the Group. Grants for materials were obtained from English Heritage and East Cambridgeshire District Council: the grants together with individual donations have allowed timber and metal to be purchased as the work has progressed. The repair programme has moved forward steadily: the wooden tower was strengthened and reclad, the cap was rebuilt on the ground and lifted back in place by crane. The replacement sails were fitted in 1996, and since, have been fitted with a complete set of shutters. The internal gearing has been restored and one set of stone furniture made. A small amount of meal has been produced. Currently, a 'wire machine', for dressing the meal into various grades is being made.
THE HOW FAMILY AT WICKEN MILL - 1838 - 1864
John HOW was born in Witchford, Cambridgeshire on November 1st 1795. His parents were Thomas HOW and Elizabeth (nee PATMAN) who were married at Grantchester near Cambridge in February 1793. Currently we have been unable to find from where Thomas originated but Elizabeth PATMAN’s family has been traced back to the early 1600s in the villages to the west of Cambridge and to Ely. To date, no memorials have been found before that of John’s parents, which is in Wicken churchyard.
Sometime after John’s birth, the family settled at Upware, near Wicken and it is suspected that they were in farming. John was an only child as far as is known and as a young man was employed in the Cambridge area as an agricultural merchant’s clerk. He married Elizabeth WHITE, the daughter of a Soham farmer on July 20th 1819, and they had five children, born over the next 14 years.
In 1838 John How purchased on mortgage, Wicken Mill and worked the Mill and the village Farm until his death in 1864. In the 1851 census he is shown as a Miller employing 3 labourers and a Farmer of 100 acres employing 4 labourers. By 1861 the acreage had increased to 176 acres and he employed 6 men and one boy. As far as is known there was never an actual Mill House and the How family lived in a house (now no longer) on the other side of the green, which according to the 1841 and 1851 census was the next property to the Maid's Head Public House. After John's death, none of his sons was willing to take on the responsibility of the mill and the requirements of John’s will, so it was sold. The descendant trees of the three of his sons and daughters who are known to have married have been 99% documented up to the present. The three families of John and Elizabeth's children went very different ways. We suspect some sort of rift within the family before or on John's death but have found no proper evidence or papers to support this idea. The family gave up the mill, no one willing or wanting to take it on.
Caroline HOW, the eldest daughter was married to Richard FYSON. He had started the family Engineering works in nearby Soham, The FYSON family though is now spread throughout the country and have and do contain a number of eminent people.
Alfred HOW had married Mary HOBSON from Stretham and had four children. Within a year of John HOW'S death, they emigrated to New Zealand, North Island, a town named Thames. They established a large family, earning their living, not from farming as had at first been intended but from working initially in the gold mining/cuprilite industry that began late in the 1860s in the North Island.
Ebeneezer HOW took to the miller's trade and married Caroline SINDALL when she moved to Wicken as a servant to an elderly lady. They initially lived in the village but later moved to Fordham, where the eldest daughter Adelaide married into the READER family. William HOW was the first son, he became a miller, eventually purchased the Mill at Freckenham in Suffolk; this he ran until 1922. His descendants are now spread around the globe in America, Canada, and South Africa.
Of William’s younger brothers, Alfred HOW and Albert HOW, both joined the army and appear to have fought in the Boer War. On their return Alfred HOW who never married became a Postman at Mildenhall and Albert HOW took up the family trade of Miller with his own Mill in Fordham which went bankrupt. All the rest of Ebeneezer and Caroline's children, all females, died before marriageable age, three of them under 10, within a week of each other from typhoid fever in March 1871.
It was thought until recently that there were no longer any descendants of John HOW in Wicken but we have now found that two family members have returned to join the many others in the surrounding countryside of Cambridge and Suffolk.