Watermills & Windmills: A Historical Survey of Their Rise, Decline and Fall as Portrayed by Those of Kent

Reissue of the original 1933 publication.  336pp, with black and white illustrations.  Deep blue cloth-covered boards, with gilt titles to spine.  8vo.  Cloth a little dusty, gently rounded at corners and spine ends.  Hint of shadowing on text block edges.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight.   Some newspaper clipping relating to the later fate of some of the mills loosely laid in.

When Watermills and Windmills was first published in 1933, most Kentish mills were already in a state of decline, and since them even more have disappeared.  Int he early part of the 20th century, William Coles Finch spent many years wandering around the Kentish countryside, accumulating information, interviewing old miller folk and gather together a unique collection of prints and photographs.  The Kentish mills were a thing of beauty, as well as functional, dotted over the landscape – this is Finch’s unique record of them before the decline that came later.