It was very interesting to see the photo of the windmill. When I first went to school in the late 1940s, the warehouse in the
photo was still there, as a more-or-less derelict shell, right on Windmill Road, but there were no signs of the chimney, the mill or the cottage. The beams to support the floor of the gantry house where the man is standing were still jutting out of the wall, but I cannot remember whether they jutted out across Windmill Road (which means that the ridge of the warehouse roof ran east-west, and the cottage was on the opposite side of the road from the warehouse), or whether they jutted out to the south (which means that the ridge was parallel with Windmill Road, and the cottage was next door to the warehouse, towards the south).
I suspect the latter, but cannot be certain. If this is the case, the photo is taken looking north-east, with Windmill Road behind the high hedge at the right of the picture, and then running up past the warehouse and the chimney.
The warehouse was on the west side of Windmill Road, virtually opposite the junction with Henley Road which clearly did not exist then as it contained houses built in the 1930s.
When I went to school there was a hedge along the west side of Windmill Road, with a run-down (or so it appeared) nursery behind the warehouse and running north to Huxley Road. The foundations of glasshouses could be made out on the ground, with water tanks at the end of them, where we used to catch newts. There was a much more prosperous nursery on the other side of Windmill Road, which stretched across to the end of Lopen Road. Some time in the 1950s or 1960s (probably the '60s), this was built on, joining up the two ends of Oakfield Gardens
( the different roof pattern can readily be seen on Google Earth).
In fact Google Earth, shows that the warehouse was half way down the eastern side of the chess-board-looking playing field marks, at 51 deg 37 min 8 sec North, 0 deg, 4 min, 50.47 sec West, and the mill itself must have been at the south-west corner of those markings.
Windmill Road still exists (August 2007) and still are some other Victorian houses in
in it, opposite the ends of Huxley Road and Cheddington Road. I think they were called Harrington Terrace.
According to Google Earth the houses opposite St Aldhelm's church have gone, presumably in connection with some expansion of the school which was built on the site of Millfield Road, built on the mill
field, some 20-30 years ago. The school is called the Aylward school, after Gladys Aylward, the missionary who went to China, and who was brought up in and returned to Cheddington Road.
There is a blue plaque on her house in Cheddington Road stating that
she was born there.
Brenda Noble adds that it was the Taylors who had the nursery at
the side of the property:
Summers Nursery was opposite Taylors Nursery and they grew, according to Lilian, pink
roses. She thinks they were bushes, and they can be seen in the photograph of the Windmill. Evidently there was a man who worked for Summers Nursery called Little Titch, a very small man who owned a donkey and cart and would ride up to Covent Garden each week to buy fruit and, I think, vegetables to be sold at the
nursery. He housed his donkey in the warehouse at the Windmill. Also there was a Glass Blower
who worked in the warehouse. Lilian said that, as children, they used stand and watch him
working after school, and it was like magic that the big bubble appeared each time at the end of his long pipe.
Louisa Payne reports that Windmill Road was built by her great
great grandfather, Samuel Green. The family must have been quite
well-known in the area: Samuel's wife, Mrs Clara Green (later Mrs
Clara Lambert), was the local nurse and midwife; Archibald Green was
at one time the local policeman; and Miss Ethel Green was a
school teacher at the local school.
