Mill of Hoeke

The meal loft

In a mill, we don't speak of floors, but of lofts. On the ground floor you find the meal loft: the place above all others where the traditional miller keeps a close eye on his milling operations. Because most of the grain, meal and flour is stored here, the floor of the meal loft (as also of all the other lofts) is made of naturally insulating wood. If grain and meal sacks were placed on a stone floor, they could all too easily draw moisture and start to rot or go mouldy. Of course, that's the last thing a miller wants! With the same aim in mind, a dado of wooden wainscoting has been applied to the standing inner wall of the meal loft up to a certain height. That way, the masonry of the mill's solid rump cannot give off moisture to grain or meal sacks that are laid against it.

In the meal loft, the meal chutes and chute bins debouch. These are the wooden tubes along which the ground product is properly guided into the sacks. Since the Hoeke mill has two pairs of stones, you will also see two meal chutes and chute bins here. 

The rope in the middle of the room is the guide rein. During rotation, it is used to raise or 'train' sacks. At the end of the guide rein is a length of chain with a pincher. This is a piece of iron shaped in a figure of eight, which can be used to easily ‘pinch’ (or attach) the sacks and release them again. Another rope hangs against the wall: the claw cord. This rope is used to still be able to hoist grain to the upper loft by hand when conditions are wind-still.

The stone loft

The stone loft, just above the meal loft, houses the millstones. There are two pairs of stones in the Hoeke Windmill: one for ‘coarse meal' (meal for animal feed) and one for bread flour. We speak of stone pairs because two stones rubbing against each other are always needed in order to grind corn: a stable, stationary lower millstone (the lier) and a rotating millstone of the same size on top of it (the runner). Each pair of stones is encased in a wooden stone box, grain bin and no end of accessories. 
In the stone loft, you will also find a ‘gallows’. This is a sort of primitive but perfectly functional stone hoist. The miller can use it to lift and reverse the runners when the grinding stones need to be honed. 'Honing’ is the process of deepening grooves that have worn too flat on the milling surface of the stones. Due to the many kilos of grist passing through the millstones, this is a job that has to be repeated from time to time. The miller uses so-called ‘honing hammers', hand-operated hammers with a particularly sharp, hard cutting edge transverse to the direction of the handle. In a kneeling position (!), the miller then has to spend a whole day at honing before he has a runner or lier ready again.

The stones are driven from the centrally rotating upright wooden shaft. At the level of the stone loft is a large, wooden, horizontally rotating ‘star wheel‘ (rail wheel) around that upright axle, which in turn drives the smaller wheel on the claw iron. The claw iron is perpendicular to the centre of the stone coupling that drives the runner. 

The guide loft

The guide loft is fairly empty. Apart from the fact that the miller predominantly uses this loft to store tools and non-essential items, this is the loft that has only the ‘guide shaft’. That is the shaft with guide cord, with which the miller raises the sacks of grain (usually up to the stone loft) using wind power. 

The guide shaft can be operated by the miller using a thin steering rope from either the meal, stone, or guide loft itself, as he wishes. The guide shaft is then engaged by lever action with a rocker (beam) and steering rope in the corresponding wheel on the constantly rotating upright shaft. This is how the guide shaft turns the guide cord around itself and lifts the bag upwards. As in the stone loft floor, there is also a double trapdoor installed in the guide loft floor around the guide shaft. In this way, sacks of grain can also be trained and stacked up to that level.

The hood

In the hood loft, we find the mill's actual drive mechanism. The hood consists of the mill shaft and strong, heavy beams. It forms a unit that rests on top of the upper edge (‘wall plate‘ or 'crawl floor’) of the mill rump, on a ring of conical cast iron (formerly elm wood) rollers. The miller calls this ring the paternoster ring. It is encased in a very strong, wooden upright ring that ensures that the hood always remains centred, regardless of the wind direction from which the mill rotates. This is necessary because the wooden ‘combs’ (teeth) of the driving ‘take-up gear’ on the mill shaft must always engage properly and precisely in the combs of the crown gear on top of the upright shaft. This is driven by the sprocket via a virtually right-angled transmission: the vertical take-up sprocket drives the horizontal crown wheel.

Around the take-up gear, you will see a steel plate that lies against the entire surface. The plate can be drawn down using a lever system (‘the take-up’), which the miller can operate via the ‘take-up cord’ from the mill wall below. This is the means by which the miller can shut down the mill, although this must always be done according to strict procedure!

Further in the hood we see the upper end of the tail and of the beams. These parts allow the mill to be turned into the wind from the mill wall. On top of the hood is a weather vane. This helps the miller to see to it that the mill is properly turned to the wind whilst it is in operation. After all, wind is variable: not only in terms of force, but also in terms of direction.

Exterior

The Hoeke Windmill is a Flemish stone ground sail windmill: a windmill that can be operated from the ground. The mill rump is brickwork. To make the structure extra strong and practical, mill rumps are usually not cylindrical, but built up of conical brickwork. With a ground-level inner diameter of about five metres and a hood of about four metres diameter, the Hoeke Windmill is a mill with a relatively slight conical form. The reason for the rather ‘perpendicular’ mill rump at Hoeke is the fact that the foundation blocks (square-shaped masonry stumps) on which the previous wooden stake mill dating from before 1840 stood were located relatively close together. The present stone mill was constructed using the same four stumps.

On the mill wall - that is the earthen, grassy low hillock on which the mill stands - paths lead to the two entrance doors of the mill. The two wide doors are situated exactly opposite each other. This way, the miller can always work safely when the sails are in motion. Depending on the wind direction from which the mill rotates, the miller chooses to open only one door and access. He will always leave the door and access that is located in the danger zone of the mill's turning sails closed.