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photographic detectives
Posted: Mon 18 Jul, 2016 4:46 pm
by warringtonrhino
this purports to be a photograph of the windmill at Sykefield, Authorpe.
The mill had doors facing west and south.
Can any of our photographic detectives help me ?
which of the doors is the lady seated inside?
using the size of the bricks and the lady as clues, can we estimate the base diameter and height of the mill?
Re: photographic detectives
Posted: Mon 18 Jul, 2016 6:19 pm
by Steve Jones
It appears to have been incorporated into a house.See here for sale notice and modern picture:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for ... 48296.html
Re: photographic detectives
Posted: Mon 18 Jul, 2016 6:28 pm
by Steve Jones
Correction ,the reference I gave is colton Mill which is not the same as Austhorpe just nearby.Austhorpe apparently derelict as in picture and then demolished the site being under a school playground later.
Re: photographic detectives
Posted: Mon 18 Jul, 2016 6:52 pm
by tyke bhoy
OK not a detective but lets have a stab.
I'd say west door for a couple of reasons. Firstly the left side is consistent;y darker which may or may not be moss growth. Secondly there appears to be a window to the right side and obviously the near and far sides but I don't think to the left. If I was reliant on natural light as much as possible then north facing windows would be least priority.
The lady looks quite tall and might fill the door (6Ft?). I'd say the diameter is probably 2 and a half her height and the height about 5 times. So 15ft diameter and just short of 30 ft high
Re: photographic detectives
Posted: Wed 20 Jul, 2016 4:44 pm
by warringtonrhino
Thanks tykebhoy, it was a bit naughty of me, but I already know that the Austhorpe windmill was 7.7 metres diameter at the base,

but I am trying to determine if the photograph is actually the Austhorpe windmill. It ought to be, by elimination because it looks nothing like any of the other windmills in our area. There was a windmill on the hill at Somerville Green, shown on the 1775 Jeffery's map, but as explained in my Foundry Mill History Chapter,it had gone by 1785, so it could not have been photographed in 1920. Given that the Austhorpe windmill had a 7.7metre base, and the lady is 3.7metres closer to the camera, could it be the one in the photograph? A single lens does not see the full diameter of a circle, and I suspect a camera in 1920 had a different perspective, than modern digital ones? I will stop rabbiting on and leave it to the experts!
Re: photographic detectives
Posted: Thu 21 Jul, 2016 9:57 am
by warringtonrhino
if the windmill was 10metres tall, how far away from it would a 1920 cameraman have to be to get all of the building into the photograph?